3. Parallel communications

In 1972, the IEC (International Electrotechnical Committee) published a standard establishing the principle of bus interfacing between measuring devices. In 1975, the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) published the IEEE-488-75 standard defining an interface for programmable instruments. Since 1978, this standard has been adopted by the IEC (IEC 625-1) and the ANSI (American National Standards Institute). It is now the subject of an interface known as the IEEE-488 bus or GPIB (General Purpose Interface Bus). It was, in fact, developed from proposals by Hewlett-Packard, which is why it's also known as HPIB (Hewlett Packard Interface Bus ).