Sensors & Software has now been publishing GPR newsletters for 30 years, since 1993!!! We do a bit of reminiscing about the things that have changed during that time and the things that haven’t.
In today’s day and age “content is king” but long before that became common, Sensors & Software was already committed to sharing content with our customers. Thirty years ago, Dr. Peter Annan, the founder of Sensors & Software, started our quarterly newsletter, aiming to educate the world about ground penetrating radar – explaining how it worked, demonstrate its uses, dispel myths about the technology, and share product innovations.
In January 1993, the first edition of EKKO_Update was released, featuring a story on EKKO_Tools, an early precursor to the current EKKO_Project GPR processing & analysis software (Figure 1). This newsletter focused on GPR theory and the pulseEKKO family of products. Some of the same elements (upcoming courses, events, useful resources) from that first newsletter are still present in our current newsletters, although much has changed over the years.
Back in 1993, there were no “digital platforms” to share this content – no website, email, or social media – so, newsletters were printed & distributed. This required us to print, fold, stuff and stamp envelopes and physically mail each edition to our subscribers all over the world. In fact, some current employees can still remember helping to fold and stamp hundreds of newsletters every three months.
In April 1999, we introduced Noggin Notes (Figure 2), a second newsletter for our Noggin customers with a focus on case studies and general interest stories. EKKO_Update continued to be published quarterly with technical tips and related GPR theory.
In January 2005, we returned to a single newsletter format, and introduced Subsurface Views, which has been published quarterly ever since (Figure 3)
Throughout the years, just like hairstyles and clothing styles have changed, so did the look of our newsletters, as shown in Figure 4.
As of 2022, we have transitioned to a completely digital format, allowing us to integrate multi-media into our newsletter stories (Figure 5). However, despite the graphical changes and technological changes, the content still focuses on application stories and answering common GPR questions.
As this year marks our 30th anniversary, we have decided to share the full history of newsletters on our website with you, our valued subscribers. The full catalog of historical newsletters can be found here. These legacy newsletters provide the history of Sensors & Software and our products.
In addition, the newsletter enables us to recognize the work that our customers do using Sensors & Software GPR equipment. It allows us to learn of successes and challenges faced in the field and share this with a wider audience. Over the years, we have featured stories on how our equipment is helping prevent damages, solve both present and historical mysteries, understand the changing geology of our planet and so much more.
We hope that you enjoy our newsletters as much as we enjoy creating them for you. We are always looking for customer stories and content ideas for future newsletters, and we would love to hear from you! Please send questions you have or stories you would like to share to sensoft_training@spx.com, and we will try to include them in future editions.
