Chapter 1

Disclaimers and caveats

Hi – my name is Tony, and I have worked in and around the field of industrial Instrumentation for
over 30 years, 11 years as an instrument technician within three different industries and the rest as an
instructor of that same subject at Bellingham Technical College. And no, that is not a photograph
of me on the cover – rather, it’s one of my former students doing contract instrumentation work at
an oil refinery in Louisiana.
During my decades working in and teaching this career, I have seen many things and have learned
many important lessons. Some of those lessons came as a result of direct experience, some from
observing the experiences of others. My goal in writing this guide is to share some of this practical
experience with you in the hope that you will find within this career all the challenges and rewards
it has to offer.

No amount of experience makes anyone an expert on everything, and so you should know some of
the limitations and biases of my advice. To understand these limitations and biases, it is necessary
to know a bit more about the author.
This guide is written from the perspective of someone who has only been employed as a technician,
not as a scientist or an engineer. It also comes from the perspective of someone who received most of
their education outside of any classroom: my first foray into the world of technology and engineering
was growing up on a small farm where my millwright father taught me the basics of construction,
welding, electricity, and machine maintenance. This was a place where he and I built experimental
wind turbines and solar water heaters, and designed our own metal lathe from scrap parts. It was
also a place where both my parents strongly supported self-education, purchasing for me electronic
kits from Radio Shack and later a personal computer (before the IBM PC or Apple MacIntosh even
existed). Our home library was well-stocked with an encyclopedia set, an array of technical books
spanning aircraft piloting to electrical engineering, and overseen by parents who respected the power
of the written word. My home library and home workshop were halls of learning far more engaging
than any classroom at public school, although I was fortunate enough to have many good teachers
who did what they could within their limited schedules and budgets to fuel the fire of a young boy’s
curiosity about all things scientific. These experiences taught me in a very personal way the value
of hard work and self-study, the importance of doggedly pursuing understanding in a world that can
be crushingly indifferent to individual wants and needs.
As much as my childhood taught me the value of personal effort, it also taught me the value