Use and abuse of microprocessors

Abstract

Patience Clever was sitting in front of a huge keyboard with manuals, pedals and innumerable register keys. But instead of an organ there was only a small spectrometer behind the keyboard. Patience was surrounded by a group of people who were all watching to see how she was going to do a very difficult analysis. She was desperately trying not to make a mistake among all the buttons with inscriptions such as “modfier, full sample volume, double injection and quality control sample” while she had to keep up with pressing “gas stop, magnet on, read, increase temperature” in time Instead of hearing the Toccata in d-minor by J.S. Bach, she only saw a metronome going from side to side every few minutes. “How do you know that the result is correct just from that silly metronome?” asked one of her most important customers. “Is there anyone else who can do this determination?” asked a voice in the background “How do you document the movement of the metronome?” asked someone who looked a little bit like Frank. “I heard that you did the last analysis without modifier!” said an elderly woman who seemed to be the inspector of an accrediting body. Patience felt that she would soon start to cry. She raised the thick book in front of her and yelled “it’s all written down in the vocal score! I can reproduce it!” But all the people around her started to laugh. The guy who looked like Frank had all of a sudden a sort of tape recorder in his hands and said: “this is the latest game boy. You just conect it to the keyboard. Then you have to play that only once, and the next time the game boy will reproduce it exactly”. Patience started to tell all the people that she did not need it because she was an artist but nobody heard her. The recorder was already connected and started a loud “beep, beep, beep, beeeep”. It took some time until Patience was aware that the sound was coming from the alarm clock on her bedside table. She switched off the alarm and allowed herself another five minutes to think about her dream and a bit about the day facing her. “Thank God I am no organ player, and thank God spectrometers are controlled by a computer” she murmured as she finally got up. “However, analytical chemistry is still an art.”