Applied QED Solutions - Press Release

Press Release: What's in a name?

June 4, 2006

...a lot, if you buy what the co-founders of Applied QED Solutions are selling. The company has developed a suite of design analysis software, QED Analysis, to support the electronics industry. The company also provides expert consulting services.

When they started out some 4 years ago in a basement office in southwestern Massachusetts, Applied QED Solutions was not the original name of choice. "To originate a company name took some effort," recalled Jim Waltman, company Chief Software Architect and co-founder. "We spent several weeks mulling over acronym combinations." Names like: 'The Norse Group' coupled with a Viking logo and 'TORC' with a big wrench logo were considered. "This was not easy for us. I suppose it seems a little silly in retrospect but, at the time we struggled to find a combination that would help define for the world who we are," said Waltman.

Ultimately, the search focused on a couple simple terms. "We wanted to provide practical solutions. We wanted whatever we worked on to be applied to the real world and not something non-tangible. So, the words 'Applied Solutions' fell together, recalled Waltman. "It was a natural."

Just having the title, "Applied Solutions," wasn't good enough. They weren't just planning to give a minimal set of solutions from the application of their products and services. The gravity of what they were preparing to provide needed to be reflected in the name. "The best solutions are always the focus," stated Joseph Ledoux, Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder. "We quickly came to realize that the intensity of our company needed to be reflected in its name." Drawing on their life experiences, the team reflected on some of the practical lessons they learned from industry and in college. All to search for the answer, the name.

"As an undergraduate in my physics and mathematics courses," Ledoux remembered, "a few of my professors smugly, almost with a 'matter of fact' attitude, setting out postulations and then working through lengthy, complicated derivations, only to plug three letters at the end of their proofs. Those letters were Q.E.D. I recall my confusion, at first, as to what they meant. You see, the professors used this acronym like it was a common part of my native language, which it wasn't. Sure a professor or two gave out a definition or two and I never forgot them. I remembered how the intensity of their proofs were summarized with the simple acronym, Q.E.D. How elegant. How appropriate. Genius by experience. So simple and clear cut, to them and yet so complicated it seemed to a novice, like me, at that time. One professor even redefined the term to be, 'Quite Easily Done.' Jim liked that form. That was the point when we knew 'QED' was the missing element."

So what does QED stand for?

According to the sixteenth edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1992, page 82), the term Q.E.D. is attributed to Euclid (fl. 300 B.C.), Elements, bk. I, proposition 5. Proposition 5, too difficult for many students to pass beyond, became known as the asses' bridge {pons asinorum].

QED stands for Quod Erat Demonstrandum: Which was to be proved.

Quite Easily Done.
Quality Engineering Design.
Quick Evaluation Demonstration.

Applied QED Solutions, that's the name, as intense as the co-founders' convictions and focus on excellence.

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