Cochran Undersea Technology

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Michael Cochran, who co-invented the microcomputer at Texas Instruments Inc. in the 1970s and then used this so-called miracle chip to build TI's first handheld scientific calculator, is now strapping powerful undersea computers around the wrists of U.S. Navy SEALs. Last week, off Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, members of the Navy's elite special forces unit made the first official computerized decompression dives in U.S. military history using dive computers made by Cochran Undersea Technology, a small company tucked in the industrial core of Richardson's tech corridor. The SEALs donned an "aggressive" version of a Cochran wrist-worn dive computer already being sold to scuba shops that allows recreational divers to go deeper, stay under longer and come up without getting the bends. Divers need to know how long they can stay down at specific depths and how to safely surface without forming nitrogen bubbles in their blood, which can be painful or even cause paralysis. In very rare cases, the bends can be fatal. Once back on the surface, divers can download critical dive data into a PC to track their progress. But dive computers are no easy design feat. "The ocean is a fairly hostile environment. Computers very much don't like water," Mr. Cochran says in typical understatement.

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