Thirty years before "140 characters" meant anything at South by Southwest Interactive, 15 years before the dot-com boom and bust and eight years before Michael Dell moved into that dorm room, there was James Truchard's garage.
There, Truchard and fellow University of Texas researchers Jeff Kodosky and William Nowlin gave rise to National Instruments, which formally celebrates its 40th anniversary with a shindig Saturday at The Thinkery children's museum.
Not many Austin tech firms have celebrated 40th birthdays, so Austin Mayor Steve Adler, who's been taking some heat from the high-tech community over the Uber-Lyft standoff, has declared Saturday to be NI Day in the company's honor.
“Austin has innovation in its DNA, and National Instruments is a big reason why," the mayor said in a statement. "A global technology industry leader with deep Austin roots, a long history of giving to the community and empowering students in STEM education, NI is a true role model in Austin."
In a city obsessed with comparing how things are now with how they used to be, National Instruments is decidedly old-school. Its 1976 founding came on the heels of Austin's high-tech wave of 1960s pioneers such as Tracor, IBM and Texas Instruments and preceded the 1980s next wave led by Dell Computer.
Still headquartered in Austin, National Instruments today boasts 7,400 employees and offices in 50 countries designing testing and instrumentation equipment that helps other tech companies do their work.
The National Instruments creation story has been told many times. Here's how 512tech's Lori Hawkins described it in a 1997 story not long after the company finally made the move to go public:
