An MIT spin off originally doing business as Integrated Technologies Inc., Boreas Inc worked on MRI system development. While Boreas principals were at MIT their work had been the basis for a refrigerator for superconducting devices that won a 1994 R&D 100 award. At the time, superconductivity offered the promise of products capable of tremendous power and speed when certain materials are cooled below a critical temperature. At that temperature, superconductive materials lose all electrical resistance and are capable of carrying very large currents with no heat generation. Based on a technology in which helium gas is compressed and expanded in a unique thermodynamic cycle, the B100 cryocooler developed by Boreas, Inc., offered significant advantages over other technologies for cooling superconducting materials. Invented in the MIT Cryogenic Engineering Laboratory in 1984 by Joseph L. Smith Jr., Senior Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the laboratory, and Dr. Alan Crunkleton, then an MIT graduate student, Professor Smith and Dr. Crunkleton went on to found Boreas in 1988 with Dr. Crunkleton as president of the company.
