Ted Hall is a research scientist who is also a plywood boat-building enthusiast. His interest in boat building led first to his creation of a software package for designing plywood boats (yes, it will run on the palmtop) and then to a need for a CNC router to cut his boat projects. Being convinced that such tools were basically giant plotters and that it should be possible to make one for a lot less than the $20,000 entry level price of a conventional CNC router, he spent three years puttering in his spare time to develop ShopBot. In the last two years about 150 ShopBots have been sold to customers in the North America, Europe, South America and Asia.