As an example of its operation we may consider a complex waveform and imagine that a suitable detector is responding to this waveform. A computer receiving the detector output might typically sample it once every millisecond and store about 4000 samplings or more in memory. It will thus need only four seconds to collect the complete signal. The computer would apply the fourier transform process to the stored data in about another second and thus generate the frequency domain spectrum:Essentially the Fourier transform has converted the time domain plot (a) into the frequency domain plot (b) in no more than 5 seconds. Thus, the detector collects all the necessary information simultaneously and the computer decodes this data into the conventional spectrum