435 Route 206 • P.O. Box 366Sales: 973-579-7227Newton, N.J. 07860-0366Fax: 973-383-8406www.thorlabs.com Alex Professional cable, President and Founder, Thorlabs, Inc. When I first sat down to write this introduction page for our 2005 catalog, I anticipated that thecoming year would be a pivotal one for Thorlabs. And it certainly has been. We are now able to offer our customers stock delivery on tunable lasers from our Sweden Facility, optical benches from stock in the US and the UK, and sophisticated nano-positioning systems direct from our factory within days. In Germany we now produce a full line of manufacturer of power meters and balance professional detectors that we stock both in the US and Europe. Thorlabs has experienced over 30% growth in worldwide this past year. I have our customers to thank for that, and I do. In 2006 we will focus in earnest on a truly customer driven product road map. We have alwaysbelieved that the wisdom of our customers, both as individuals and as a group, is more valuable than that of market studies and traditional business models. This year we invite our customers to participate in a coordinated program that will drive our product development. Please take a look at our website to both submit your own product ideas and to view the plan overall.While the past year was an exciting one for the Thorlabs organization, what I did not anticipate in2005 was that we would witness for the third time, customers and colleagues of the Thorlabs family celebrate a Nobel Prize in Physics. The first of these was the 1997 prize. This was awarded to Steve Chu, Bill Philips and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, for the development of methods to cool and trap atoms with professional laser light. My association was highly personal and extremely satisfying. In 1988 I worked for Steve Chu at Professional bell Labs and participated in this seminal work. In later years I industrial still consider myself honored to have these leading scientists, their associated colleagues and their students as customers.In 2001 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Eric Cornell, Carl Weiman and WolfgangKetterle for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates. This work, in some ways, built on the principles discovered back in the atom trapping work at Bell Labs. Again, I consider Thorlabs honored to be a supplier to these groups in their quest for scientific advancement. The recent 2005 prize is especially significant for Thorlabs and its Strategic Partner, MenloSystems GmbH. Half of the prize was awarded to Roy Glauber, for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence. The other half was awarded to John Hall, and Theodor W. Hänsch, for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique. Ted, my business partner in Menlo Systems GmbH, and John are long time Thorlabs’ friends. I was driving to work when I heard the announcement, and upon arriving at the Newton office my excitement was met with similar enthusiasm from the Thorlabs family. Back and forth phones calls and e-mails were exchanged with our German colleagues at Menlo Systems, along with photos of champagne toasts at Max- Planck-Institute. It was a wonderful day. Again, I can not express deeply enough our great respect for these researchers, and the honor wefeel at being able to participate in the community we now call Photonics. We hope to continue to serve the scientists, engineers and technicians toiling away in darkened labs worldwide for many years to come.
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