The story
In 1985, the Physiology Department at New Zealand's University of Otago encouraged the development of a computer-based data acquisition system to replace their paper-based systems. In 1985, as part of his Computer Science Masters at the university, Michael Macknight built the MacLab, one of the first analog-to-digital converters that connected to a Macintosh computer.
Michael and his father, Tony Macknight, created a company initially known as Analog Digital Instruments. Very soon, they formed a partnership with Boris Schlensky who bought in skills around manufacturing, marketing and distribution.
Two software packages were initially developed: Chart (chart-recorder software, now LabChart) and Scope (digital oscilloscope software), which provided software control of the recording unit as well as a range of display and analysis features:
In 1988, business name was registered and the company began manufacturing Macintosh computer-based data acquisition systems for the life sciences research market.
In 1996 the company's first Windows compatible data acquisition system was released. The Windows compatible MacLab data acquisition systems were branded as PowerLab.
In 2005 the LabTutor software for education was released.
In 2015 the kuraCloud cloud based learning platform was released.
From Wikipedia’s article on ADInstruments, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3