THE EQUIPMENT going to Munich and Moscow are accessories to products being made in Kansas and are distributed worldwide. One is called the Irregular Area Mask Generator or IAM. This equipment can ac tually erase areas that appear on a television screen. As Schumacher explains it, a photograph won't, for example, differentiate between lakes and ponds. However, if one wanted to measure only the lakes in a picture the ponds could be eliminated through the use of the IAM, thus leaving only the lakes and then it would be comparitively simple to measure them. The same would be true if one wanted to measure only the barley acreage in, a picture that also contained winter wheat. Also going overseas is Electronic Devices' Video Inverter Mixer or VIM. This can change polarity of a picture from positive to negative or visa versa. It also can "mix" pictures from two cameras. Thus, before and after pictures of a flood for example can be displayed on a TV screen at the same time. One will be positive, the other a negative. Whatever is the same, Schumacher said, will cancel out. WHATEVER IS different will show up on the screen so all one will see is the flood plain. Forest fire damage assessment can be handled in the same way. The extent of fungus infection in a forest can be determined easily, Schumacher said, through the use of the equipment. A fourth development by the Great Falls electronic firm, an XY Digitizer, is going to San Francisco State University. This does pattern recognition and produces a graph or histogram. It thus gives a visual display of, again for example, how much of a picture contains water, how much is forested area, how much is cropland. Coupled to a computer, Schumacher said, there is no end to what it can do. Development of these products has brought about considerable expansion at Electronic Devices. A year ago the outfit had four employes and two rooms in the Rocky Mountain Build`ing involving about 600 square feet. It now has set up a semi-production line and is occupying 2700 square feet. There are eight employes now and Schumacher said he expects to have between 30 and 40 by the start of the new year. JACK SABO, recently retired from the Air Force where he was in charge of intermediate electronic maintenance, is production supervisor for Electronic Devices. Dick Hoopes, who joined the firm a year ago, does circuit design. Lynn Schumacher designs the front and back panels which are manufactured by the Great Falls firm. Meanwhile, Electronic Devices is getting considerable exposure this month in"Signal," a publication of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. The 2,000-word article plus three pictures describes what the firm is doing and also deals with the image inhancement accomplished by Schumacher and two scientists at the Air Force Academy on the Shroud of Turin, believed by many to be the burial shroud of Christ. The cloth, housed at a cathedral in Turin, Italy, has an unexplained image. From this image and through the use of computers and Schumacher's electronic equipment, a statue has been fashioned bringing the image into three dimensional prospective. Clears big hurdle toward manufacturing goal Electronics firm on its It took a bit of time, but Electronic Devices Inc., a local electronic manufacturing firm, got the job done. The firm, which is headed by Pete Schumacher, sold a half dozen Linear TV Measurement sets to the Agriculture Stabilation and Conservation Services. Schumacher, who returned to Great Falls last fall to establish the business, was jubilant over the first order for goods manufactured by his firm. And Schumacher's excitement is shared by the firm's chief engineer, Dick Hoppes, who came back to Montana to join Electronic Devices. In the period between last September and the present, the firm has provided world-wide electronic service, and members of the firm's staff have taught electronics - but the goal of becoming a manufacturing firm was never set aside. But just what is a "Linear TV Measurement set" and what would ASCS want with orie of them? The answer isn't nearly as complex as the set itself and, the way Schumacher explained it, there is no limit to the number of uses to which the set can be placed. on its way By differentiating between shades of gray, the machine can determine exact acreages at the flip of a switch. It can determine the health of crops, the amount of weed infestation, can read erosion indicators and can find water and irrigation problems and can do all of these thing more quickly, more accurately and at greatly reduced costs compared to those at the present. A television camera connected to a video-tape recorder can be placed in a light aircraft and images of the land over which the plane flies can be recorded on tape. The tape is returned to the laboratory in which the Electronic Devices' unit is installed and played through the device which projects the image of the ground on a TV screen. This image is calibrated to a map which was drawn to scale in much the same way as an overlay is made. With this completed, the tape can be run and through use of controls on the machine, any density of gray wanted can be obtained and each shade of gray can provide needed information. Schumacher and Hoopes do the manufacturing while Lynn Schumacher, a graphic designer, does all of the graphics for the instrument panels while Rhonda Sayre, the firm's office manager, handles the firm's heavy volumes of mail and scans trade publications for business opportunities. "There is 65,000 parts in each projected picture,' Schumacher said, "and this lets you see just about anything you need. You can't do anything about a problem you can't see but, with a machine like this, you are allowed to see the problem." Schumacher said the machine could determine how a pivotal irrigation system was working, could provide accurate acreages of snow cover but not depth, could show indica- ! tors of pollution in water, loss of heat from residences and accurately map developments of all types. "We have no idea how many ap1 plications can be made of the machine but we are sure we have barely scratched the surface," Schumacher said. "We do know we can study crops more accurately and, through the studies, improve crops.". UNIT FUNCTIONING Pete Schumacher of Electronic Devices, Inc. rests his hand on the top of the Linear TV Measurement set while checking images, produced by the machine, GREAT FALLS TRIBUNE Section 5, Page 43 Sunday May 13, 1979 on the screen of a standard television set. The set is the first manufactured product sold by the new Great Falls manufacturing firm. (Tribune Photo) Crop analyzing, measurement methods make it to little screen Agricultural representatives from across the country gathered here last week to view an innovative method of analyzing crops. Six linear measuring sets, as the new units are called, were displayed at the office of the county Agricul tural Stabilization and Conservation Service. Dale Nerlin, Bozeman, state ASCS director for compliance measurement, conducted the week-long workshop for a hand-picked group of ASCS representatives from six districts nationwide. The equipment, which is manufactured here by Electronic Devices Inc., utilizes techniques of photogrammetry and has myriad applications, explained EDI president Peter Schumacher. Agricultural uses include analysis of aerial crop photographs, he said. The equipment is capable of detecting 'differences between various crops depicted in a photograph, he said, as well as variations in irrigation levels. Distances between crops and the size of fields can be monitored as well, he said. The system is not especially complicated, Schumacher said. It is composed of an ordinary television set, a video cassette recorder, a television camera, a measuring unit and a .. power source. EDI manufactures the measuring unit and power source, which are new products. For agricultural measuring, Schumacher said, a black and white video cassette recording is made of a field from an aircraft at about 7,000 feet Back on above the ground. the ground, the recording is played back in on a regular television screen much the same way home video recordings of TV shows are replayed, Schumacher said. An area measuring approximately 1 mile by 14 miles shows up on the TV screen, he said. Because of their composition, different crops reflect differently on the film, assuming any one of 64 shades of gray. Color film is not used, he pointed out, because the resulting crop colors are deceptive. Electronic or mechanical devices can be used by an operator to outline on the display screen specific areas for measurement and evaluation. The ASCS is teaching its members to use the new equipment, Nerlin explained, for use in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's voluntary measurement program. Previously, he said, aerial measurements were taken, but only about once every 10 years. The new measurement equipment would allow a set of photos to coincide more accurately with growing seasons, he said. If the USDA approves the equipment, photos will be possible in Montana once a year. 1 In addition to agricultural uses, the equipment has applications in medicine and the military, Schumacher said. For instance, diseased tissue will show up a different shade of gray than healthy tissue and military installations will be readily noticeable, he said.. And, at the University of Mississippi, he added, similar photogrammetry methods are being used to detect oil deposits. A complete oufit - television set, recorder, camera, measuring set and power source costs about $8,000, he said. But, the measuring unit and power source alone sell for about $4,500 EDI is distributing the units worldwide. A market survey indicates a demand for about 250 of the units the first year, Schumacher said. He expects that by the fourth year of distribution, demand will rise to between 3,000 and 4,000 units. |