The development and use of measurement and control technologies played a major role in the "amazing success of European imperialism," according to Alfred W. Crosby in his 1997 book Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society 1250––1600. As commerce and cities grew, town clocks were built in the 14th century to keep time. Europeans used measurement to advance their development of navigational, military, commercial, and administrative skills. They made maps by measuring distances and directions, allowing them to send ships across oceans to predetermined locations. Their measurement skills enabled the development of cannons and other military weapons that were better than those of their enemies. They replaced the barter of the middle ages with money, accounting, and methods for measuring weight, length, and volume. By the 16th century, when the decimal system and algebraic notation were introduced, European society, according to Crosby, "was advancing faster than any other society in its ability to harness and control its environment. Few if any other societies equaled the West in its science and technology and its ability to project its power over long distances and to improvise new institutions and new commercial and bureaucratic techniques."

In the 16th and 17th centuries, according to the late science writer Isaac Asimov, the Italian scientist Galileo demonstrated the importance of experimenting and measuring, making an indelible impression on the scientific world.

Over the past four centuries, a number of measurement instruments were invented and improved upon for use by researchers, enabling many scientific advances and the development of modern products. Among the most notable inventions were the thermometer to measure temperature (1603); barometer to measure atmospheric pressure (1644); optical microscope to "see" invisible living organisms (1680), electron microscope to image materials and measure distances between crystalline grains and later atoms (1937); devices to measure electrical voltages, current, resistance, and magnetic field strength (1800s and 1900s); chromatograph to separate chemical substances and measure their concentrations (1906); mass spectrograph to separate isotopes of elements and measure their concentrations (1919); cloud chamber (1895) and subsequent radiation and particle detectors for reactors and accelerators; and other devices to measure gas and liquid pressures, as well as the hardness, ductility, fracture resistance, and toughness of materials. In the 20th century, the world was blessed with even more sophisticated measurement tools, such as detectors that convert light or sound to electrical signals for processing by microcomputers. Sensors that can "see," "hear," and "feel" were invented and linked to computers to make possible robots that can frequent places too dangerous for humans, such as deep in the ocean, under the ground, or in a production plant highly contaminated with hazardous chemicals or radioactivity.

During the 55 years of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s existence as an energy and environmental research laboratory (see Fig. 1), the further development of Western measurement and control technologies has been phenomenal, and ORNL has played a major role in these successes. Basic research in instrumentation and control was part of the early mission of ORNL (called Clinton Laboratories in 1943 and renamed ORNL in 1948) because of the need to monitor and control its anchor facility, the Graphite Reactor. The reactor was the Manhattan Project’s pilot plant for demonstrating whether plutonium could be produced by several reactors in large enough quantities for use in an atomic bomb needed by the United States during World War II. Because the reactor emitted radiation, detectors had to be developed to measure it and to ensure that employees and equipment were not receiving harmful amounts (see Fig. 2). Devices also had to be designed and tested for controlling the rate of fission in the reactor to ensure its safe operation (see Fig. 3).

In the mid-1940s, ORNL mechanical and chemical engineers, physicists, and technicians designed and fabricated radiation detectors, such as Geiger-Mueller tubes, proportional counters, and boron fluoride neutron counter tubes. (Neutrons are produced by fissioning uranium atoms in reactor fuel cores.) These devices were not available on the market, so ORNL researchers invented them to meet the requirements of the Graphite Reactor and other projects.

In the late 1940s, instrumentation engineers at the Laboratory helped develop the instrumentation and control system for ORNL’s Bulk Shielding Reactor; an innovative feature of this motorized system was its ability to insert or withdraw reactor control rods when needed. Similar control systems were developed for ORNL’s Low Intensity Test Reactor (LITR) and Materials Testing Reactor (see Fig. 4). Measurements conducted during a LITR experiment showed that it was both feasible and safe to operate a boiling water reactor, a concept later marketed by the General Electric Company. Many of the fundamental principles of reactor control and protection systems developed at ORNL for these early reactors are used widely in today’s commercial nuclear power plants.

About five years after Union Carbide Corporation took over as the contractor to manage operations at ORNL for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), it was decided to combine all the Laboratory’s instrumentation activities into one grand organization. The Instrumentation and Controls (I&C) Division was born in February 1953. The division was temporarily headed by Associate Laboratory Director E. D. Shipley until February 1954, when C. J. (Cas) Borkowski was named division director.

Over the next decade (1953 through 1963), ORNL engineers developed instrumentation and control systems for four additional reactors at ORNL—the Aircraft Reactor Experiment, Homogeneous Reactor, Tower Shielding Facility, and Oak Ridge Research Reactor. In 1955 the division helped build an operating reactor for the Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, held in Geneva, Switzerland. A group of Laboratory engineers completed the design and construction of ORNL’s first large computer—the Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine (ORACLE) (see Fig. 5). In 1958, ORNL personnel participated in a four-plant program to monitor airborne radioactivity from reactors and laboratory effluents as an outgrowth of a criticality accident at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant. In the early 1960s ORNL researchers designed radiation monitoring equipment for the Oak Ridge Isochronous Cyclotron, the Health Physics Research Reactor, and the Civil Defense Program.

In the 1980s and 1990s, ORNL instrument engineers felt the full force of the microcomputer revolution, both as users and developers. The electrical engineers who had earlier joined ORNL were no longer drawing circuit designs on paper and testing mockups of a circuit board; they were designing integrated circuits for silicon chips, using the computer and sending the designs by electronic mail to chip fabricators. Personal computers were being used as diagnostic tools to analyze noise from reactors in the search for signal aberrations that indicate abnormal and potentially unsafe operation. ORNL’s growing expertise in noise analysis has been applied to the detection of telltale noises from failing motors and new U.S. submarines (that are supposed to be quiet).

Since the R&D 100 Awards from R&D Magazine began in 1963 (originally called the I•R 100 Awards and presented by Industrial Research magazine to denote the 100 best innovations of the year that might be of interest to industry), researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge facilities have received a total of 105 awards. Almost half of that total—48 R&D 100 Awards—have been won by ORNL researchers who have developed instruments and software for measurement and monitoring (including detectors and sensors), data analysis, and control systems.

ORNL’s early analytical chemists spent the 1940s separating and processing plutonium and determining concentrations of uranium, plutonium, fission products, cadmium, fluoride, nitrate, and chloride. By 1950, when ORNL’s Analyical Chemistry Division (ACD) was formed, chemists were using colorimetry to analyze trace quantities of material. Estimates of concentrations of selected elements were provided by optical and electron spectroscopy. Radioactivity measurements were made by Geiger-Muller counters, ionization chambers, gas flow alpha counters, and sodium iodide gamma-ray spectrometers. At the Graphite Reactor, ORNL chemists studied and developed neutron activation analysis, the first analytical technique for measuring ultratrace levels (less than a part per million) of many different elements. To limit worker exposure, techniques were developed to remotely analyze small quantities of radioactive samples.

In the 1960s ORNL chemists were responsible for the first U.S.-authored book on neutron activation analysis. Analytical mass spectrometry grew at ORNL for such tasks as separation and analyses of transuranium elements and body fluids. In the late 1960s, AEC support was reduced, so ORNL sought work-for-others funding. By doing work for the Tobacco Smoke Program of the National Cancer Institute, ORNL developed expertise in organic analysis and became the first AEC lab to develop a strong program in this area (see Fig. 6). In the 1970s, thanks to support from the Ecology and Analysis of Trace Contaminants Program of the National Science Foundation’s Research Applied to National Needs Program, ORNL researchers developed advanced techniques for measuring concentrations of elemental mercury, methylmercury, cadmium, fly ash, and trace elements in and around a coal-fired steam plant. Some ORNL mercury measurement techniques were adopted nationally. ORNL chemists also developed resin bead sampling to analyze trace levels of uranium and plutonium isotopes as a method of determining whether a country’s reactors were being used strictly to produce electricity or also to make nuclear material for weapons.

In the 1970s, as in the case of ORNL’s instrument engineers, the work of the Laboratory’s chemists was greatly affected by the availability of small computers and large lasers. By interfacing minicomputers with hardware, the chemists increased the capability and speed of their analytical instruments. By using lasers with mass spectrometers, they had instruments with enhanced selectivity and sensitivity. Because of the energy crisis of the mid-1970s, ORNL chemists were asked to use their modernized instruments for such tasks as determining the chemical composition and potential health hazard of coal-derived liquids and synthetic fuels that might be needed to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil. Later in the decade the chemists became involved in the National Uranium Resource Evaluation program, whose mission was to measure the U.S. inventory of uranium. ORNL’s analytical chemists also were involved in measuring radioactivity released by the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.

In the 1980s, many ORNL projects were driven by environmental and remedial action concerns. For example, many Laboratory chemists participated in DOE’s Environmental Survey, a major sampling and analysis effort at all DOE sites. A key development for mass spectrometry at ORNL was the atmospheric sampling glow discharge ionization source, enabling detection of ultratrace levels of volatile organic compounds. Mass spectrometry was developed at ORNL and applied to environmental analysis, explosives detection, engine exhaust analysis, and analysis of DNA, proteins, and compounds of biomedical interest. A direct-sampling ion trap mass spectrometer was developed and is being improved for detection of environmental pollutants, land mines, and biological and chemical warfare agents. In 1990 ACD became integrated with the Chemistry Division into the Chemical and Analytical Sciences Division, which has since developed miniaturized and computerized separation-and-measurement devices, such as the nationally recognized lab on a chip.

Staff members in the Chemical Technology Division developed analyzers (see Fig. 7) for identifying and measuring concentrations of body fluid constituents that indicate disease states. (The original GeMSAEC device, which was developed at ORNL for NASA to monitor astronauts, is now a commercial spin-off device used routinely for clinical analyses.) Also, researchers in the old Health and Safety Research Division (now the Life Sciences Division) have developed instruments to detect carcinogens in the environment and DNA indicators of the presence of diseases.

Researchers in the Environmental Sciences Division at ORNL have been interested in determining the effects of air quality and water availability on the productivity of forests. Improving upon the field of radioactive isotope tagging, which was first developed and applied at ORNL by Waldo Cohn, they have used radioactive isotopes and mass spectrometers to follow the movements of nutrients and pollutants in forest ecosystems. They have used infrared gas analyzers to measure rates of carbon dioxide and water vapor exchange in forests because such information may indicate the physiological capacity of trees to withstand stresses such as acid rain, other air pollutants, insect attacks, and drought.

Researchers in the Engineering Technology Division (which was once called the Reactor Division) have developed monitors for abnormal motor operation, based on noise analysis; a technique for determining surface temperature during critical stages of the process of producing galvanneal steel for making rust-free automobiles; and a calorimetric microspectrometer for detecting trace gases in air, such as vapors from explosives and natural gas from leaks.

In the Robotics and Process Systems Division (formerly the Fuel Recycle Division), ORNL researchers have developed control systems for reprocessing nuclear fuel and environmental cleanup. In the quest to develop more responsive and versatile robots that can do work in hazardous areas that humans should avoid, researchers from this division and the Computer Sciences and Mathematics Division have developed "robot vision" techniques such as hyperspectral imaging, a laser radar camera to view complex surfaces of bodies, and a technique for dimensional inspection with frequency-modulated laser range cameras.

At ORNL recent developments of electronic and optical instruments include

• a system that measures "whispers" from U.S. submarines in the "noisy" ocean;
• a method to improve 100 times the measurement and control of radiofrequency power levels for making computer chips as part of a collaborative research and development agreement (CRADA) between the Department of Energy and SEMATECH;
• an affordable optics measurement system for determining if a lens or mirror has the right shape (as a result of a CRADA with a small business);
• machine vision systems to detect defects in fabric while it’s being woven and defects in semiconductor wafers during their production;
• an algorithm that is key to operation of a heartbeat detector for sensing the presence of a person concealed in a vehicle, such as a terrorist or an escaping prisoner;
• an instrument to help verify that Russian weapons-grade uranium is being converted to uranium fuel for power reactors;
• detector electronics for particle collision experiments at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) and at the PHENIX detector at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. These experiments are being conducted to try to verify the theory that, within the first 10 seconds of the Big Bang, quarks existed in the free state (in a quark-gluon plasma) before forming the protons and neutrons that became the atomic nuclei of our universe.

Today ORNL researchers are trying to design faster sensors on single chips that integrate sensing, computing (signal processing), and signal transmission capabilities. Developing smaller and smarter sensors that work is one of the most difficult challenges in measurement and controls. One outstanding example of ORNL’s achievements in this area is the lab on a chip to analyze small molecules and DNA to aid the development of effective drugs; diagnose disease; and identify individuals by rapid, onsite analysis of blood found at crime scenes.

Another difficult challenge is to integrate living matter with nonliving electronic circuits to make a miniature sensor that detects and measures a change in the biochemical makeup of the body or the environment. Recently, ORNL engineers developed "critters on a chip" technology in which bacteria on a chip light up in the presence of specific chemicals, and their light signals are turned into electrical signals that can be transmitted to a receiver. Such technology in the form of dispersed chips on the ground can be used to detect the presence of specific soil pollutants.

ORNL also has developed a DNA biochip that combines DNA sequences with smart electronics. The biochip uses its DNA sequences to recognize DNA sequences in a patient’s blood that show signs of the development of diseases such as AIDS or cancer. The principal investigator for the biochip is Tuan Vo-Dinh, who developed ORNL’s first biosensor in 1985; he showed that it was possible to use a light source, a light detector, and optical fibers to detect a cancer-causing agent in groundwater. Since then, he has developed a light-based method for detecting cancerous tumors in the esophagus.

Today development of biosensors to detect environmental pollutants, land mines, and biological and chemical warfare agents is a major priority of ORNL’s Center for Biotechnology, which was established at ORNL in 1994. ORNL has been a leading DOE laboratory in biotechnology research and development (R&D) since the early 1980s yet our research is a well-kept secret. The center is promoting ORNL’s biotechnology R&D, a $60-million-a-year effort. One new initiative for the Center for Biotechnology may be the development of a vigorous structural biology program by combining the Laboratory’s resources for mass spectrometry and computational science with the neutron scattering capabilities to be available from the Spallation Neutron Source, if built at ORNL as expected by 2005. These capabilities will allow scientists to make neutron measurements to determine the structure of proteins, providing valuable information that can lead to the design of new drugs to block the action of proteins that cause disorders.

In this issue of the Review, many examples are given concerning the use of biological and chemical principles for the development of instruments. Newer developments include genosensor chips for DNA and protein analysis, measurement of body temperature and other physiological parameters using wireless monitors called medical telesensors, and sol-gel absorbents for detecting airborne carcinogens.

The research area of biotechnology has developed from an appreciation of the ways that biological substances and basic concepts can be applied to solving old problems. In earlier decades the measurement of biological reactions and materials was nearly always based on principles and assay conditions commonly used in chemistry and physics. Spectrophotometers to measure coenzymes made from vitamins were the size of a suitcase and the sample consisted of several milliliters. Early mass spectrometers were so large that they filled entire rooms. Detection of air flow in the lung has depended on detecting the chest sounds in the human auditory range, as amplified by a stethoscope. ORNL researchers have improved upon all these methodologies largely through miniaturization.

Oak Ridge specialists in silicon circuits have allowed our biologists, chemists, and physicists to think small. Smaller instruments, such as ORNL’s lab on a chip, allow the use of smaller samples, reducing the volume of organic solvents needed for analysis. Smaller devices have been developed to make measurements possible within a single biological cell. "Magic dust" is a term that has been used to describe the size of ORNL’s microcantilever sensors that are so versatile in measuring, for example, changes in levels of heat, humidity, sound, and light. Now, these microcantilevers are being made into biosensors by coating them with antibodies, enzymes, or DNA so they become exquisitely selective for biological targets of interest.

Clearly, many of the amazing successes at ORNL can be attributed to the development and use of measurement and control technologies.