RevFire.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: Product introduction of baseball pitching machines - Brief article

In the 1980s, electrical engineer David Marinelli had a conversation that seeded a product launched early this year. "Some fellow engineers and myself were discussing things you can measure about athletes," he said. Somewhat circuitously--and two decades later--the discussion led to the invention of the RevFire, the first product that measures the spin of a pitched ball, or, in physics parlance, its Magnus force.

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Available in fast-pitch softball and baseball versions and marketed to college and high-school coaches, the RevFire gun detects a curveball's revolutions per second (RPS) by communicating with an...