Gooch & Housego is probably best known for the Q-Switch, the Acousto Optic device that transforms solid state lasers into industrial and medical tools by changing their output from continuous low power beam into a stream of pulses 1,000 times more powerful.
The Industrial sector, which is closely-coupled to the semiconductor and microelectronic market but also includes analytical instrumentation and metrology, experienced an exceptionally strong recovery in 2010. This was led by, and continues to be dominated by, demand from the Far East.
Gooch & Housego industrial products range from Precision and Crystal Optics for lithography and stepper systems, Optics and Acousto-optics for semiconductor inspection systems and Q-switches and Fibre Optic Components for lasers used in manufacturing the finished goods. The surge in demand for innovative mobile phone and computing products in recent years has been a major factor, not just in the recovery but also in pushing demand to new highs.
By the end of 2010, shipments of Q-switches had exceeded the historic peak reached in 2007.
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