Chris Marvell

Portions from Steve Marchant's e-mail to Andy Key

Chris Marvell (Designer of the HRX)

SM> I think they [Geoff Boyd & Robert Branton] just wanted to broaden their product range to cover business machines as well as gaming machines, unfortunately their timing wasn't ideal and although they later briefly employed me and my colleague Chris Marvell to design a 32-bit workstation this never came to anything as the IBM PC had by then completely asserted its dominance.

Memotech folded soon after and I went back to Nottingham Uni to work in the Cripps computing centre. (Incidentally the same place Robert Branton had worked for a while previously) Chris and I started a consultancy company at this time which ended up as RX Technology - to cash in on the emerging market for photo souvenirs of thrill riders at theme parks, with technology based on Chris's amazing HRX graphics system. The company, now known as Picsolve but no longer run by us, is the world No. 1 in its field.

From "Laser Focus World", December 15, 1991 in (The 1992 Buyers Guide, Directory, Manufacturers, Laser industry), quoted from business.highbeam.com.

"Amtronics Inc, PO Box 24190, New Orleans, LA 70184; 504-831-0691, FAX 504-831-0969 pres, D. Rex Gay; vp r&d, Dr. Chris Marvell; 1986 Develops and manufactures the HRX[R] Digital Imaging System for advanced, high resolution, full color, real-time image processing. HRX[R] technology, with image Management Systems and Picture Data Base, is the basis for integrated systems in the medical imaging⁺, security/surveillance and amusement park industries."

Amtronics Inc. registered a US TradeMark for HRX in 1989, the Trademark filing notes that first use of the term HRX was in February 1985, this is consistent with development of the technology with Memotech. The description was "Goods and Services: imaging system comprising an imaging board, computer chips for image capture, storage, processing and display used with computer software."

I wonder if it's Chris's photo in the Memotech factory in the Creative Computing Review in 1984?

It sounds like there is some truth in the statement on the Wikipedia Memotech MTX page that "Some of the Memotech inventions still lived on, as several employees took some of Memotech's new video editing systems for televisions back to the USA, where they are believed to have ended up at Silicon Graphics".

Director, Marvell consultants Ltd, 1985 - Present

⁺HRX in Medical Imaging

One use for the Amtronics HRX system is described in this entry in Google Books for "Liposomes" by Nejat Duzgunes (ISBN 0-12-182276-1), in relation to the analysis of liposomes by the HRX image processing system.  The relevant section is "Visualization of the Retinal and Choroidal Microvasculature by Fluorescent Liposomes" used in the study of age-related macular degeneration, the specific reference to the HRX is on page 228.