National Instruments: High Tech Success
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National Instruments is an Austin high-tech success story, a company that has maintained an impressive streak of 22 consecutive years of double-digit growth. But it all started in a University of Texas engineer's garage in 1976. James Truchard and his two partners, Jeffrey Kodosky and fellow UT grad William Nowlin, all worked at the Applied Research Laboratories at The University of Texas at Austin doing sonar research for the Navy. Their company was born in 1976 when, late one night in Truchard's garage, the men wanted to connect their computers to test equipment in order to measure sound-wave graphs for their sonar research. Sensing the great need and the usefulness for such instruments, the trio applied for a $10,000 bank loan and pooled funds from their Texas Teacher Retirement System plans to form the business. National Instruments Corporation now manufactures innovative hardware and software products that outfit computers to control and replace traditional, stand-alone instruments and automate processes in factories and industrial plants. The company makes computer products that are targeted mainly at two markets--test and measurement, and industrial automation. 
James Truchard is now president and CEO of National Instruments, which has more than 1,600 employees in 22 direct offices worldwide, with record sales in North America, Europe, and the Asian Pacific. The company experienced $274 million in sales in 1998. Truchard not only guides the international corporation, he has a hand in creating and developing products. He and Jeff Kodosky created LabVIEW, the company's award-winning virtual instrumentation software. LabVIEW is an industry leader with its revolutionary, graphical programming environment. It is used for data acquisition, instrumentation control, analysis, and simulation applications. 
James Truchard earned his PhD in electrical engineering at UT Austin in 1974, specializing in acoustics and signal processing. He received an M.S. in physics in 1967 and a B.S. in physics in 1964 from UT Austin as well. He is also a member of the Industry Advisory Committee of Scientific Computing and Automation magazine, the UT Austin Electrical and Computer Engineering Visiting Committee, and the UT Austin Engineering Foundation Advisory Council. He is a founding member of the Austin Software Council. Truchard donates NI engineering software to each UT engineering student participating in the College's Laptops for Learning Initiative. By Wayne Hardin |
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