InterCon Inc., based in Urbana, Ill., now markets two high-performance spectrophotometers manufactured by Bruins Instruments in Munich, West Germany. The Omega 10 UV-Vis and UV-Vis-NIR devices feature advances in both optical and electronic design. The illumination system contains double-grating monochromators and a high-speed grating drive, which, coupled to a photomultiplier detection system and proprietary data-acquisition electronics, allow complete wavelength scans to be acquired in milliseconds. Both instruments are double-beam design.
The sample and reference beams are produced by a prism, which alternately directs light through the sample or reference cells. Thus, optical inaccuracies associated with beam choppers or static beam splitters are avoided. Each of the instruments, priced at $45,000, includes a computer with a 20-Mb hard disk and 3 1/4"-floppy disk drive, a high-resolution color monitor, and a fully active alpha-numeric keyboard. A built-in eight-pen digital x-y plotter produces hardcopy output. The software is a DOS-based system using Microsoft ...
