This year, Optikos Corporation celebrates its 35th anniversary as a leading provider of optical engineering design, and metrology products and services. The company was founded by Stephen D. Fantone on September 9, 1982.
Dr. Fantone was inspired as an engineer at the early age of four, when he was urged outside by his father - a tooling engineer working at a typewriter manufacturing company - to see Sputnik as it circled the earth. The sighting sparked his interests in optics and photography, which ultimately led him to further his education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Rochester’s famed Institute of Optics. He credits the help and guidance he received from the many mentors/inventors from whom he learned how to approach engineering and creative problem-solving. They include Polaroid’s Drs. William Plummer and James Baker, and Director of Research, Howard Rogers, and the many professors at the Institute of Optics.
Optikos was first located in the basement of the Fantones’ home; later supplanted by space leased from MIT; then a purchased building in Kendall Square (Cambridge, Mass.); and finally a move to its current Wakefield, Mass. location. Optikos recently completed an expansion at its Wakefield headquarters, adding several thousand square feet for research and development, engineering space and expanded IQ LabTM testing services.
The Company is well known in the optical community, partly due to Dr. Fantone’s involvement in the governance of The Optical Society - the leading professional association in optics and photonics, the science and application of light—as Treasurer for nearly 18 years. As a Boston-area high tech firm, Optikos is often called on to assist local companies and startups with the incorporation of optical technology into their instruments and products; many of the Company’s products, solutions and technological advancements may not be visible to the naked eye, but are found in homes, laboratories and manufacturing facilities around the world.
From pioneering the use of VideoMTF in lens metrology, to advancing client projects in virtual reality, medical endoscopes, fluorescence imaging, medical diagnostic, and reconnaissance systems, and more, Optikos develops and utilizes optical technology for its clients in new and innovative ways. Optical, mechanical, electrical and software engineers ensure that clients’ products are not only made possible and producible, but also commercially viable in their marketplace.
President and CEO, Stephen Fantone, looks ahead to the Company’s next 35 years, which “will be fueled by our world-class team of engineers and the expanding application of optical technology in personal, commercial, medical, industrial and defense products. Whether we answer a client’s call to design a simple optical component or engineer a sophisticated system, our goal first and foremost is to help ensure their product’s technological and commercial success.”