A multichannel vacuum ultraviolet spectrometer has been constructed to provide time‐resolved measurements of line radiation from a plasma. The spectrometer may simultaneously view up to 40 preselected narrow spectral bands or lines from a common viewing chord in a wide spectral region (∼60–450 nm) with the maximum frequency response limited to 80 MHz by the photomultipliers and 350 kHz by the data‐acquisition system. Rapid reselection of impurity lines is facilitated by the use of multiple slits cut in a metal foil placed at the Rowland circle of the instrument. Due to the limitation imposed by the present fiber‐optic coupling to the plasma the results to date are from impurity wavelength in excess of about 220 nm.