What is most rewarding about covering the business community are the examples we come across each week of small companies doing big things, of the innovation that has marked Rhode Island since its founding.
This week is no different. Both stories appear in our High Technology section.
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Paul Matthias is nothing short of inspiring. At the age of eight, he glued household containers and plastics together to form contraptions resembling old diving bells, which he used to lower himself into a quarry to explore its depths.
Thirty years later, Matthias is still exploring, recently finding himself in a multi-million dollar, computer-driven submarine staring at what sparked his childhood, deep-sea dreams: Titanic.
Matthias owns Polaris Imaging, Inc., an ocean floor imaging company. He has gone on two expeditions to the Titanic wreck — both featured on the Discovery Channel — and has searched for mysteries like Amelia Earhart’s plane and the treasure of King Charles I.
His work at Titanic has been revolutionary. It was Matthias that disproved the popular belief that it was a 300-foot gash that sank the Titanic. Instead he discovered six small openings, totaling just 15 feet that caused the ocean liner to sink.
Mesa Systems, Guild Inc. is an eight-year-old high technology company in Warwick.
Out of those offices, Mesa software experts are helping the New York Yacht Club/Young America Challenge team in its bid to re-capture the America’s Cup in New Zealand in 2000
The company’s software lets more than 20 designers, engineers, and consultants communicate about various test results on their design. It is a critical process as the Young America Challenge team searches for an edge over the competition.
Mesa Systems’ Mesa/Vista program provides web access to critical information that Jack Cowie, vice president for Young America says allows the team to compete with the best technologies in the world.
These are just two examples of Rhode Island companies using their initiative, creativity and expertise in ways that might not be so obvious, but in ways that demonstrate how fertile an area Rhode Island can be for fostering that innovation, that creative genius.
