Phil Black, founder and president, launched Presco, Inc. 40 years ago. Since then, we have helped numerous clients commercialize groundbreaking technologies. 

Presco has a long history of solving the toughest of problems under demanding schedules. Our Team of engineers takes on the most difficult of electronic design assignments.

Our History

Presco was established as a Connecticut corporation in 1978, with the goal of providing engineering, research, and development services to the local industry. One year later, we acquired our first computer system, a DEC PDP11/34 running RSX11-M. This resource allowed us to embark upon a series of software intensive development projects for clients such as the St. Regis Paper Company and the General Electric Company. Our work included real-time control of machinery, laboratory data acquisition and database management, operating system modifications and device drivers, plus assembly language coding for embedded microcontrollers in industrial products.

In the 1980’s, Presco expanded its facilities to include a modern electronics laboratory with high speed oscilloscopes and logic analyzers, microprocessor emulation stations and CAD support. During the next few years additional technologies were explored, especially those relating to industrial sensors and actuators. Projects in microprocessor based instrument design were quickly augmented by more sophisticated circuits such as digital signal processors and ECL based computational architectures.

One of the strengths of Presco’s present facility is our commitment to the use of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) as an adjunct to our skills in digital circuit design. FPGAs are a type of custom integrated circuit which can be developed quickly using Presco’s in-house FPGA Design Center. Programmable gate arrays offer most of the benefits of custom integrated circuits: lower parts cost, smaller board area, and improved reliability. Using FPGAs, these benefits are achieved without a costly gate array development cycle, and the new chips are available to our clients in just a few weeks.