This paper describes a simple and low‐cost electronic device which calculates the position of an incident VUV photon on a commercially available position‐sensitive detector composed of two multichannel plates and a resistive anode. The readout method used consists of a position‐time conversion during data acquisition and a subsequent transformation of the collected data by a personal computer (Apple IIe). Applications to VUV spectrometry in atomic physics, showing spectra of 400 A˚ width with a resolution of about 15 A˚, bring out advantages and drawbacks of this system.