History of Electrical Safety Analyzers

The basic tool of the trade is a piece of test equipment called an Electrical Safety Analyzer.for brevity the abbreviation "ESA" shall be used for reminder of this course.The ESA dates back to the 1960s.It is generally accepted that the first ESA came to be when a hospital in Alaska,who had become aware of the needto perfom this testing,contacted Dr Norman Alpert at a University in Chicago.Dr. Alpert build and designed a very basic analog unit for the Alaskan hospital.Later, after moving to the Burlington,Vermont area,Dr. Alpert and george Luhr formed Bio-Tek Instruments.

A company dedicated to the manufacture and marketing of specialized test devises for medical equipment.Mr. Luhr left the firm but Dr. Alpert remains the company pesident.Neurodyne Demspey (now called Dynatech Nevada),Instrutek,Bio-Design and others all tried their hands and opportunity in the market.Most of these firm have gone out of business but Bio-Tek ang Dynatech Nevada continue to thrive and dominant manufacturers of ESAs today.


Primary Functions

There are two primary functions associated with an ESA.

1- Leakage current measurement

2- Measurement of the resistance of the ground conductor in the power cord of the DUT
(Device Under Test)