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Product Overview

Home > Products > Earlier Products > The Ranger Story

Ranger data loggers began life in Southern England 22 years ago.  A small, handheld, 4 channel, data logger, was licensed to Gulton Inc of Rhode Island, owners of the Rustrak paper chart recorders.  The name Ranger (from the much loved character, The Lone Ranger) was chosen for the logger and the accompanying software was called Pronto (nearly the same as Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s trusty Indian companion).  Early advertisements encouraged customers to buy by declaring, “save a lot of silver too.”  (The Lone Ranger’s horse was Silver).

The (Rustrak) Ranger 1 was one of the first electronic, graphing, logging devices and replaced the paper chart recorders which recorded temperature primarily, but also 4-20 mA and 0-2 Volts.  Much thought went into the design of the user interface, culminating in a very simple, two button, selection operation. The DOS based software Pronto managed the data and was appreciated by customers for its ease of use, clarity and reliability (no bugs!).  A Hercules Graphics card enabled the computer to show the Pronto graphs on screen.

A unique feature of the firmware in the logger, incorporated from the start, was the patented Adaptive Store storage technique.  Customers haven’t always understood how it works but even then they enjoyed the relatively detailed results they saw on their Pronto graphs and in their reports.

After Ranger 1 came Ranger 2, retaining the same essence as this first Ranger.  In addition it had more channels, a memory card and was very versatile, offering a range of pods for different applications.

Gradually power quality measurement capability appeared and indeed started to take over.  The 1200 series measured power parameters.  It soon became clear that this was a market on which Outram should concentrate as it requires a high level of expertise.  The Ranger 1 technical team thrive on difficult challenges.

The first instrument dedicated to power quality measurement was the Power Logger, then came the Harmonic Analyser the HA5000 and finally, still under licence, the PM6000.  Adaptive Store delighted customers with the increasing detail it provided as its techniques and the instruments evolved.  Pronto became Pronto for Windows.
 
However all was not ‘easy riding’ for Rangers and their customers as the product line was transferred between companies and geographic locations a number of times and joint development ventures came under a licencee axe.

In 2003 Outram Research Ltd (ORL), the Ranger 1 design house, negotiated back the sole rights to the Intellectual Property for the brand and is now able to focus fully on Ranger's destiny.  The culmination of its years of experience in the data logger market is a state of the art, extended family of Ranger Power Quality Analysers, as described on this site.