Our History 1970's The beginning at Air Craft Carriers for the U.S. Navy. Thermal Trend’s underlying “business logic” of how Thermographers work, what data they need, when they need it, and how to automate the data collection retrieval, review, reconciliation, and entry started back in the late 1970s when Fred Colbert was performing infrared inspections on Air Craft Carriers for the U.S. Navy. The thermographer needed to have a complete comprehensive inventory of all of the equipment and locations as well as the past history of what was tested, not tested, and any past problems. This inventory easily be in the 10’s of thousands of pieces of equipment. Read more

1982 PC enters the market The Personnel Computer or PC enters the market with the 286 computer. Thermal Trend’s business logic is now developed in a Relational Database development platform called DataEase. DataEase’ early hallmark was the ease with which programmers found they could rapidly develop useful software applications. Thermal Trend 1.0 development was contracted with a professional database company called Work Group Solutions in Seattle WA.

1985 Microsoft introduces Windows Microsoft introduces Windows, allowing Thermal Trend to advance from a DOS operating system to a graphical interface

1992 Microsoft released Access version Work Group Solutions is again contracted to develop a new Windows version of Thermal Trend based on Microsoft Access. Thermal Trend 2.0 Pro took advantage of all of the new Window’s operating system features and continued to build upon the proven success of the business logic that that was the foundation of the MS-DOS version.

1996 Fujitsu released the Stylistic 1000 tablet format PC Fujitsu released the Stylistic 1000 tablet format PC, running Microsoft Windows 95, on a 100 MHz AMD486 DX4 CPU, with 8 MB RAM offering stylus input, with the option of connecting a conventional Keyboard and mouse. This allowed Thermal Trend a more practical platform in the field with a screen that provided better view ability in the bright sunshine when outdoors.

2000 Windows Pocket PC The Introduction of the Windows Pocket PC, meant that Thermal Trend could be introduced on a new hardware platform that provided much better ergonomics then the Tablet PC’s of the time. The development of Thermal Trend had to be optimized to the fit and form of the The Pocket PC. This meant building on our successes and not overloading the platform with any bloated code from the earlier versions. The new version was called “Thermal Trend – Lite“, in line with the new hardware platform of the Pocket PC, which had a docking station that would allow for automatic synchronization between the Pocket PC and a Notebook computer, and a Barcode scanner could be inserted into the CF Memory slot on top of the Pocket PC for scanning barcodes in the field. Battery life as well as the ability to clearly see the screen even in bright sunlight made this the platform of choice in the field.

2013 Microsoft Surface Pro The Microsoft Surface Pro becomes the next standard in tablet computers. Thermal Trend – Lean is optimized to take advantage of this new platform for data collection/reconciliation/image analysis and report generation all being possible in the field.