SALT LAKE CITY — The Titanic exhibition is open right now in Sandy, but there’s another unique Utah tie to the Titanic story: A Utah company helped find the Titanic in 1985.
Engineer Brent Miller, one of the men who played a big part in the mission to find the ship that sat more than 12,000 feet deep in the Atlantic Ocean, said the thrill of finding the Titanic was overwhelming.
“Tom Hilton, my partner, we formed the company in mid 1970s as, Colmek Systems Engineering and we were involved with the telemetry systems for deep ocean mining, mining and manganese nodules,” Miller said.
Miller shows a photograph of himself working at Colmek Systems Engineering, shown on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. (Shelby Lofton, KSL TV)
He said a Texas millionaire recruited him and his business partner in a quest to find the Titanic in 1980.
“We had long-range, telemetry systems for video and other and other underwater instrumentation,” he said.
Miller said they found a lot of targets, including one that seemed promising.
“The reason we didn’t really locate it in 1980 is because it was in two pieces, as we now know,” Miller said. “I did some measurements with our sonar, and it just wasn’t big enough to be the Titanic.”
Another dive in 1985, this time with Woods Hole Oceangraphic Institute, confirmed their findings from years before.
Although Miller wasn’t on that dive, he and Colmek’s work helped find the shipwreck.
“We were very excited, of course, and more excited when we found out that we were going to have the opportunity of going out the next year in 1986, actually visualize and dive with Alvin,” Miller told KSL.
Brent Miller discusses his work to find the Titanic on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. (Shelby Lofton, KSL TV)
Miller explained in detail how his work contributed to finding the Titanic.
“At that time, unfortunately, wood fiber optics was not available,” he said. “We developed this long wire telemetry system to allow video to go over a 20,000 foot-long cable…we put together all of the other equipment that went on to the Alvin. Jason Junior was the submersible small ROV that was on Alvin that actually went around and swum around the Titanic.”
He chose not to take anything from the site.
“We felt this was a a graveyard and not to be desicrated at all,” Miller said. ” Yes, I guess I would have liked to have a nice little plaque on my mantelpiece, but, no, I’m extremely glad that we decided not to do that.”
He and his partner, Tom Hilton, would later meet some of the survivors.
“It was really humbling to talk to these people and realize the significance of what we found,” Miller said.
Miller’s engineering wins and relentless determination aren’t forgotten by the company he formed. It’s now called Coda Octopus Engineering, and its CEO, Jim Balent said they’re very proud of it.
“Our systems are still found in a lot of Navy systems, we’re in a lot of aircraft systems,” Balent said. “And we’ve even done stuff that go on ground robotics as well.”
In the spirit of discovery, they’re still bringing information and stories to the surface.
“What the company started on was really taking a number of other technologies and sort of integrating them together, and at least for the deep sea mining portion, coming up with this custom telemetry system to bring all that information and bring it up to the surface,” Balent said.
