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Guide to the Sheldon Breiner Photograph Collection
SC1093  
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Collection Overview
 
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Description
The materials consist of scans and digital photographs taken by Sheldon Breiner documenting his undergraduate days and the Stanford campus.
Background
Sheldon Breiner is a scientist trained in geophysics and specializing in exploration and research of the earth. Much of his career involves remote sensing for mineral and cultural resources through airborne, oceanographic and land based geophysical surveying. He received a B.S. (1959), M.S. (1962), and Ph.D. (1967), all in Geophysics, from Stanford University. As Chairman of UBIQ Networks, Inc. and as a typical Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur, he uses New Ventures West to launch high-tech start-ups. Breiner is currently chairman and founder of Potential Energy, proprietary database company that will produce maps of petroleum resources in the all the world's oceans using data from a once-secret government project in which he was involved and analysis methods initiated by him years ago as his MS thesis at Stanford. He was also awarded a patent June, 2009, for a technology-based solution to the distracted driving problem – the only one put forth at the recent Summit in Wash. D.C. that changes the behavior of drivers, warns trailing drivers, but does not completely ban cell calls while driving. He is on track to have it underwritten by the insurance industry as an after-market device and, if successful, mandated by the government for new cars sold in the U.S. He was the founder and president for 15 years of GeoMetrics, Inc., world-wide airborne geophysical survey contractor for oil and mineral exploration and a manufacturer of land, marine and airborne geophysical instruments, now a San Jose-based subsidiary of OYO Corp. of Japan. Breiner was co-founder and CEO of PML, Inc., which developed technology for finding oil between existing wells and for monitoring the oil-water interface for the ‘automated oil field’ licensed to Schlumberger and later acquired by Baker Hughes. An investor and board member, he was the interim CEO of 3DGeo, Inc. a Houston seismic imaging provider of software and services to the petroleum industry sold to FusionGeo, and is currently the Managing Member of 3DGeo’s South American subsidiary with assets in Brazil and Argentina. He was a director of ESP, Inc., environmental software for emission allowances and cap-and trade markets, sold in 2008 to IHS, database services for the energy industry. He was also the founder and CEO of Syntelligence (expert systems for commercial banking and insurance), Solis Therapeutics (therapy, prevention for viral disease), and Quorum Software (purveyor of Macintosh applications such as Photoshop, Word, Excel) for Sun, HP, IBM; a founding investor in Sherpa and Calera. He was an investor in several high technology partnerships such as Sequoia Technology Partners II, Foothill Associates, Founder's Fund (biotech), El Dorado Venture Partners, and, as a consequence, a founding shareholder in Cisco, Nellcor, Myriad Genetics and similar. He has been a pioneer in unconventional applications of magnetometers such as earthquake research, geophysical techniques for archaeological exploration, search for buried and sunken objects and various marine and airborne magnetic methods for military or security purposes. In the latter was a consultant to various branches of the US government involved with detection of submarines, mines, tunnels, weapons and other ordnance. Breiner demonstrated, in 1968, the first gun detector at the request of the White House, for security purposes at airports and buildings around the world. He holds several U.S. patents in exploration, Internet technology and related applications and patents pending in other technologies. He has been involved with many archaeological projects using geophysics to map and unearth a buried 450 BC Greek city in Italy, recently located a Manila galleon, circa 1576, offshore Mexico and discovered, using a magnetometer over 100 colossal monuments buried for 3,000 years in the jungles of Mexico, the latter earning him the moniker, in his professional field, as the "Indiana Jones of Geophysics." Breiner is a Fellow, by invitation, in the Explorers Club of New York and appears in Portraits of Success: Impressions of Silicon Valley Pioneers. He is a co-founder and former trustee of the Peninsula Open Space Trust, a conservation group which has acquired, for public enjoyment, more than 70,000 acres in the San Francisco Bay area. Breiner is member of the Advisory Board of a non-profit to aid in finding and removing landmines around the world. He is on the Board of Directors of SEAM, the recently-formed leading-edge technical non-profit company owned by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, the principal organization in the world dedicated to technology for oil and mineral exploration. SEAM’s mission is to conduct computer studies for the world-wide benefit of finding large deposits of oil and gas, sequestering CO2, among other objectives, all financed and assisted by the world’s leading oil and oil service companies. Breiner was a member for 17 years of the Advisory Council of the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University. He is an occasional lecturer at the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford and on entrepreneurial topics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the Heiland Lecturer at Colorado School of Mines. Breiner is the chairman of the Geologic Safety Committee of the Town of Portola Valley, which sits astride the San Andreas fault. He has designed and directed the construction of an online seismograph for this town to record earthquakes, and he has written and/or presented a few hundred technical papers and the technical reference on the use magnetometers for surveying with over a million copies in print.
Extent
14540.8 megabyte(s) (8267 computer files)
Restrictions
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California 94304-6064. Consent is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission from the copyright owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright owner, heir(s) or assigns. See: http://library.stanford.edu/depts/spc/pubserv/permissions.html.
Availability
The materials are open for research use. Audio-visual materials are not available in original format, and must be reformatted to a digital use copy.