Information on Theoretical Investigations in Measurement, Particularly on Reading of Instruments

The paper presents the results of investigations with a group of students dealing with the accuracy of reading of instruments, using information theory. After a short introduction to information theory and Shannon's channel capacity, the relation between the reading error and the reading time is discussed, leading to the results with reference to the limiting (critical) frequencies obtainable. Using these results, the channel capacity may be calculated. When these quantities of the channel capacity are compared with other values obtained from the literature it follows the same order of magnitude of 10 bits per second. Finally, using information theory again, the consequences are deduced. Due to the development of digital methods in microelectronics with decreasing approximation errors as well as with decreasing cut-off and aliasing errors will be the future. This is especially important for direct-coupled digital sensors, which have been used increasingly.