Pico Technology celebrates 30th anniversary

The company’s oscilloscopes, data loggers and RF equipment are used by engineers, scientists and technicians around the globe to bring their products to market.

Its automotive diagnostics products help save time and money for vehicle manufacturers and service organisations on every continent. On July 1, 1991, Alan Tong and Mike Green co-founded Pico Technology.

Initially operating from their then office in Hardwick, near Cambridge, UK, Pico’s first product was the ADC-10, so called because it was an analogue to digital converter and sampled at 10 kS/s.

It connected to the PC via the parallel port. The first order for ADC-10’s was received in August that year, with two units sold for £49 ($68) each. The ADC-10 was the world’s first PC oscilloscope, and in the years that followed Pico notched up several more industry firsts, including the first oscilloscope with digital triggering and the first high-resolution oscilloscope.

Pico’s products and employees have won many awards, such as the Queen’s Award, Elektra European electronics awards and Motor award!

Today, Pico celebrates continuous growth with sales growing year on year for 30 years with over 150 employees at its head office in St Neots, UK and in Manchester, UK, the USA, China, Japan and Germany.

CEO and owner Alan Tong said “I am very proud of Pico and how we have worked hard with dedication to achieve 30 years of continuous growth. To begin with, our aim was to make test equipment affordable for many hobbyists and small companies that couldn't afford traditional benchtop equipment. That helped them to unleash their imagination and design creativity that contributed to many advances in electronic design that we see all around us today, such as personal computers, power tools, particle accelerators and advancements in vehicle design.

He continued, “As things have progressed, we still look after hobbyists but our products have evolved to compete with the higher-performance test equipment that is used in mainstream electronics design, as well as in some very advanced technologies and by leading companies and research institutions. We now supply over 30 vehicle manufacturers worldwide. We still take advantage of the latest computing and communications standards and provide excellent value with all-inclusive product packages that don’t require users to purchase additional options or licences.

“The company culture at Pico is key to our success”, said Tong. “We treat customers as our friends, with free software upgrades and technical support for the lifetime of each product. Pico users are very loyal and have become strong advocates for our products amongst their colleagues. We treat our colleagues as our family and that is key to our very low employee turnover. Many of our team members have been at Pico for over a decade.”

“On 3^rd July we will have a lot to celebrate but we will also be thinking about the other people—suppliers, partners, distributors and former employees—who have enabled us to deliver 30 years of continuous growth.”