The industry's recognized authority for design, engineering and application of equipment and services in the global ocean community
Issue link: http://sea-technology.epubxp.com/i/527607
www.sea-technology.com June 2015 / st 21 C hesapeake Technology Inc., based in Mountain View, California, was launched 20 years ago with a sim- ple mission: to make it easy to collect and in- terpret sonar data. The company's relentless focus on this goal has driven all our product enhancements and technology innovations. It has also helped us deliver among the best customer service in the industry. The company offers custom software and hardware so- lutions, as well as thought-leading consulting services, to the hydro- graphic survey, marine geophysical, and geological survey industries through- out the world. The company's fagship product, Sonar- Wiz, provides leading-edge sonar data acquisition and processing software for side scan, sub-bottom and bathymetric sonar systems. Hundreds of organiza- tions around the world, including na- vies, universities and agencies, such as the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Offce, NOAA, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, rely on the software to manipulate and ana- lyze their sonar data. As founder and chief technology offcer of the company, I am our cus- tomers' "go-to guy"; I travel all over the world to meet with clients, conduct training sessions, and speak at industry conferences. No matter whether I'm on land or at sea, I have the beneft of hearing customers' ideas for product enhancements frsthand. These ideas form the backbone of our ongoing product development process. Our Roots My passion for marine technology has its roots in a stint at the USGS Marine Facility in Redwood City, California, that started in 1985. One of the great things about working at USGS back in those days was that there was a real spirit of adventure and optimism. My frst assignment at USGS in- volved working for a geophysicist named Byron Ruppel. He was a great guy who headed up a marine gravity pro- gram at USGS. Byron wasn't one to "suffer a fool" as they say, and we certainly had our "mo- ments." But Byron always explained concepts in a way I could understand (that is to say, at a fourth-grade level). I remember, in my frst days at USGS, Byron had purchased a shiny new Tektronix per- sonal computer that was about the size of a wheelbarrow. I was instructed to go write a program—any program—on this new machine. In my work on the com- puter I learned all about this new thing called GPS, an old thing called Loran-C, as well as about marine gravity meters and Eotvos corrections. USGS sent me to conduct geophysi- cal surveys in the Caribbean, Alaska and Hawaii. If the truth were told, I would have gladly paid them to let me come along and "work" on their projects. After a few years with USGS, I was hooked on marine surveying. In the early '90s, I left USGS to join Trimble Navigation in Sunnyvale, California, and then Me- ridian Ocean Systems in San Jose, California. At these two companies, I gained insights into how to commercialize Chesapeake Technology: A Customer-Driven Company By John Gann ST Company Profle (Top) A view from SonarWiz. (Bottom) Chesapeake Technology founder, John Gann (second to left), demos SonarWiz real-time bathymetry acquisition with the EdgeTech 6205 multiphase echosounder in St. Peters- burg, Florida.