History

The C-Born Story

In 1981 David Varley, a recent RMIT Electronic Engineering graduate, was employed by the Australian Government to head the Air Handling Control Group at Geelong’s newly established Australian Animal Health Laboratory. His first recruit was Peter Deyoung, an Electrical Engineering graduate from FIT (Footscray Institute of Technology). The two young graduates developed a close working relationship that has now lasted more than 30 years.

C-Born Software Systems was born is 1986 when the pair incorporated the company. The name C-Born comes from the C language used to write their custom operating systems and control code. 

Their first client was local Aluminium smelter Alcoa's, Point Henry Works.

C-Born produced the hardware and software systems to implement control methods for the Point Henry’s automatic Bake furnace. This system exceeded expectations in performance, delivery and cost and firmly established their working relationship with Alcoa.

In the early 90s an Alcoa US taskforce carried out a detailed investigation into the available fire control systems worldwide. Point Henry’s C-Born designed system was found to be superior to others in performance, computer technology, user acceptance, safety and cost. As the new benchmark standard these were to be installed in all Alcoa furnaces, with C-Born tasked with providing the computer hardware and software used to implement the furnace control systems. By 2004 five Alcoa plants were operating the fully installed system which became known as ‘AutoFire’.

From 1992-2004 further improvements were made in the hardware and software as the system’s user base expanded. 

In October 1993 the Institution of Engineers Australia recognised C-Born Software Systems for Significant Engineering Achievement for the Bakes Furnace Fire Control System (AutoFire.)

More recently C-Born has embarked on several varied projects, including working on national bio-security systems.