The development history of CMM is made up of three generations：

First generation: The first measuring machine in the world was successfully developed by British FERRANTI Company in 1959. The measuring machine was to record the coordinate values by good pedal after the probe contacts the workpiece and then calculate the position relations between various features using the calculator. In 1964, Swiss SIP Company started to use the software to calculate the distance between two points which heralded the era of using the software to measure the data. At the beginning of 1970’s, German ZEISS Company used the computerized workpiece coordinate system to replace the mechanical alignment. Since then, the measuring machine started to have the functions of measuring basic geometric dimensions, shape and position tolerances.

Second generation: With the rapid development of computers, the measuring machine entered the CNC era, able to finish measuring the complex mechanical parts and free curves and cambered surfaces. This machine was added with perfect learning functions, improved the human-machine interface, used the special measuring languages and enhanced the development efficiency of measuring program.

Third generation: From 1990’s when the industrial manufacturing started to switch to integrated and flexible and information-based development, and the product design, manufacturing and test also intended to the integration development, this raised higher requirements for the CMM which generated the concept of the third generation. Its features are: 1. communication with external equipment 2. standard data protocol format communicating directly with the CAD system; 3. the hardware circuit intended to be integrated in the form of computer expansion card and became the large size external equipment of computer.