Lang learned how to use computers and in 1986, founded Western Softworks, a contract programming business. Two years later, he had the idea of developing a range camera or 3-D scanner.Gordon Cornwall, "Curt Lang as Technologist," Bill Jeffries, Glen Lowry, Jerry Zaslove, eds., Unfinished Business, pp. 233-235. He assembled a team of skilled programmers and engineers, including David Sloan, a physicist, who- while at MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates- was instrumental in getting the firm into the satellite business. Sloan also played a role in BC's wireless data industry while working at Mobile Data International.Claudia Cornwall, At the World's Edge p. 158. Lang attracted financing and in 1989, launched Range Vision Inc. In 1990, he was granted a US patent for a long-range scanner. BC Rail and Custom Industrial Automation (CIA) were among his first customers.John Bermingham, "System made to measure: Lasers' accuracy attracting interest from big business," the Province, September 16, 1991. BC Rail used a Range Vision system to inspect railroad tracks for wear and CIA bought one for detecting deformities in oil refinery coking tanks. Lang left Range Vision when he and his financial backers had a falling out. In 1997, the year he died, Lang started another company, Industrial Metrics Inc., based on Range Vision's technology. He was granted his final patent posthumously—for a hand-held, flexible scanner. When Lang died, Al Purdy wrote a poem about him.Al Purdy and Sam Solecki, eds., "For Curt Lang," Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy, Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2000. Lang's business associate, Gordon Cornwall, took over Industrial Metrics and sold it in 2008 to the Holland Company in Crete, Illinois."Holland acquires Industrial Metrics Inc." Progressive Railroading, April 21, 2008.
