By J. Theodore Cherry, Ph.D.
President, Science Horizons, Inc.
We have been uniquely honored: Our company's AQUINAS System not only has been installed worldwide, but has also received CTBTO certification at seismic, hydroacoustic, and infrasound sites. These events, which resulted from twenty years of system development, focused on ease of use, standard hardware and software interfaces, and standard system requirements.
As I reflect on those twenty years, I remember with great fondness and appreciation my employees, past and present, whose dedication and talent made the AQUINAS System work, my customers whose critiques made the system better, and my investors whose patience made the system possible.
I also remember with great pride the leading edge technical accomplishments that allowed us to climb the ladder to success. These include real time, error-free, data acquisition on a UNIX Workstation (1986);
an array/network controller that provides error-free, point-to-multipoint and multidrop intrasite communication (1992); the development of a 24-bit digitizer for emplacement in four-inch boreholes (1995); remote command and control of the System (1996); command authentication and verification (1999); data authentication in the borehole using a Fortezza card (2000); remote key management (2000); Hot Backup software linking two workstations for continuous data availability in the presence of a hardware or software failure of the primary workstation (2001); Data Collection Center software that provides remote data acquisition and remote command and control of the system via a graphical user interface (2002), implementation and system testing of the CD1.1 protocol (2003); a US patent that protects Science Horizons' use of seismic arrays for earthquake prediction (2003); a quieter downhole digitizer that reduces the noise floor for most seismometers by at least 4 dB (2004); and a third generation array/network controller (CIM 3) that uses high-integration components and the Linux operating system to provide a component with a TCP/IP interface, compact size, low power, and high reliability (2004).
The corporate value, "One data frame lost is one too many," has successfully guided Science Horizons through the past twenty years of AQUINAS System development. We look forward to the next twenty years with equal excitement and we truly recognize the burden placed upon us in our pursuit of nuclear non-proliferation and eventual disarmamemnt.