Computers in the Laboratory Downloaded from pubs.acs.org by 80.82.77.83 on 01/03/18. For personal use only.
PREFACE
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L A B O R A T O R Y T H A T T O O K A D V A N T A G E of all of the forms of automation available today would be quite a place. Many routine sample preparation tasks would be done by robots that would introduce the samples to instruments for analysis. The data generated would be taken by a computer system, analyzed, reported, and then stored for later retrieval and more detailed analysis. Each chemist, technician, secretary, and manager might have his own work station at his desk with communication between fellow workers and with larger machines for data analysis and data management. Working with data would be considerably easier because of graphics displays that would make the information easier to extract and understand. Sound far-fetched? In this volume, much of what I just described is covered. The intent of this collection is to give an idea of the breadth of computer usage in chemistry and the resultant gains that can be achieved. I thank all who have contributed to this volume, and in particular Gerst Gibbon (Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center) for his assistance in reviewing the papers.
JOSEPH G. LISCOUSKI
Digital Equipment Corporation Marlboro, MA May 1984
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