The International Foundation for Telemetering has awarded Brigham Young University a grant of $150,000 to be used by the College of Engineering and Technology.
According to BYU Electrical and Computer Engineering chair David Comer, 90 percent of the grant will be used for student fellowships and 10 percent for course materials.The foundation is a nonprofit organization that promotes and stimulates technical growth in the tele-metering field by sponsoring technical forums, educational activities and technical publications. The BYU gift reflects the foundation's interest in training students for the field, according to John Hales, foundation secretary.
Telemetering is a science where information from mechanical and electrical sensors and electronic systems is transmitted from remote or inaccessible locations to convenient locations where the data may be processed, recorded, monitored and evaluated.
Products that require any degree of reliability must be tested to verify that they satisfy design requirements. These items are often subjected to severe vibration shock, heat and cold, and telemetering monitors how successfully they pass the tests.
Telemetering has become a precise science, according to electrical and computer engineering professor Michael Rice. In 1953, for example, when the world's first commercial jet airliner, the Boeing 707, was being developed, 250 teleme-tering data measurements evaluated the airliner's performance. In 1990, testing on the veteran Boeing 747 required almost 12,000 teleme-tering measurements.
Electrical power companies routinely use telemetering systems to monitor the rotating speeds of their power generating turbines.