April 08 Issue - Employee Monthly Magazine

From simple vision to hot tech transfer

Tracking technology yields major commercial success

Who would have thought that the world’s leading line of radio frequency identification (RFID) products would spring from the vision of five guys in the humble surroundings of a garage in White Rock, New Mexico. Yet, the technology that these former Laboratory scientists developed and transferred to the public sector is found today in identification tags on railroad cars, shipping containers, and fleets of buses, trucks, and taxis across America.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags developed by scientists at the Laboratory were first used in the 1980s to monitor the movement of livestock to help control the spread of disease. Today, RFID tags on virtually every rail car in North America track rail assets, while the technology also is used for wireless payment of tolls in 17 countries. Photos coutesty of TT Division

Gary Seawright, Jeremy Landt, Rand Brown, Al Koelle, and Paul Salazar developed the technology at the Laboratory from 1971 to 1980 for the Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture. The DOE application was to track vehicles and nuclear materials, and the DOA application was to track cattle and monitor their health.

With support from the Laboratory to transfer technology to the private sector in the form of borrowed equipment, permission to alter their work schedules, and assistance with obtaining patent waivers, the scientists founded Animal Management Technology (Amtech) Corporation in 1983.

The company targeted the cattle industry until investor David Cook, a Los Alamos native who founded Blockbuster Entertainment, suggested using the technology to track railroad cars instead. By 1995, Amtech employed about 500 workers and was engaged in a joint venture with Motorola. It subsequently moved its research, development, and manufacturing center to Albuquerque.

TransCore acquired the company in 2000, and today, TransCore’s RFID tags are deployed in transportation applications in 39 countries, with wireless toll-collection systems in use in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, and Hong Kong.

“Going from five guys and a vision to transportation applications in 39 countries is humbling,” said Landt, who now serves as TransCore’s chief scientist. “While this achievement was probably incomprehensible to us at the time, RFID’s sustained commercial success in transportation built a foundation for RFID developments we see today.”

To date, TransCore has distributed more than 31 million RFID tags and 53,000 RFID readers worldwide.

“Amtech is a prime example of the positive impact technology transfer can have on industries and markets,” said John Mott, acting division leader for Technology Transfer. “In this case, while the ultimate commercial value was serendipitous rather than by design, it demonstrates the importance of identifying dual uses for technology developed with federal investment.”

—Mig Owens