Local company hits small screen

A local company will get its 15 minutes of fame Thursday when a popular TV show features one of its high-tech products.

3rdTech Inc., located at 119 E. Franklin St., will have its high-precision laser range finder and 3-D scene digitizer featured on Thursday’s episode of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”

Doug Schiff, the company’s vice president, said the exposure will help enlarge his small company, which manufactures hardware and software.

“‘CSI’ is a very popular show, so they always end up getting a lot of requests for information from people in the industry,” he said.

“Hopefully, those people will hear our name and come contact us.”

Schiff said “CSI” discovered his company last year at a crime scene investigators training conference where the product was on display.

In Thursday’s episode, called “Spark of Life,” investigators will use 3rdTech’s product to help solve the sort of crime often featured on the show.

“The basic concept is that it scans a space with a laser and produces a 3-D model of the space,” Schiff said of the featured product.

Professionals can use it for various purposes, including 3-D Web design and computer game design, but the last seven units the company sold went to law enforcement agencies to aid crime scene investigation.

Since the device produces exact, to-scale replicas of rooms that can be saved and manipulated with a computer, crime scene investigation can be more thorough and not as rushed, Schiff said.

“A crime scene is something that only exists for a short period of time,” he said. “Our device can make millions of measurements and basically preserve the scene so that (investigators) can come back months or even years later.”

Similar products exist, he said, but they are bigger and not as user-friendly.

The digitizer costs between $40,000 and $50,000, but Schiff said the price will decrease with time. It’s available across the country, along with two other 3rdTech products.

CEO Nick England, a former University professor, started 3rdTech five years ago.

“(England) saw a real need for developing technology out of the University and into the marketplace,” Schiff said.

“Spark of Life” will air at 9 p.m. Thursday on CBS.

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.