Omega Optical, Inc.

Omega Optical's founder and President, Robert Johnson, grew up in Brattleboro, Vermont on his family farm and graduated from Brattleboro High School in 1963. After working for five years in Boston for an optical filter manufacturer, Bob decided to return to southern Vermont in 1968 to start his own company. To equip the business he scoured the scientific salvage yards of the growing high-tech community in Boston with $10,000 in his pocket, gathering bits and pieces of obsolete vacuum and electronic equipment.

Like many start-up companies, Omega Optical began in a garage. The facility was a 400 square foot shop on the Johnson family homestead that could not be labeled a business because of zoning regulations, but was permitted as a ¡§hobby shop¡¨. Using basic hand tools, the pieces of high-tech scrap collected in Boston were reassembled into four high-vacuum reactors capable of manufacturing interference filters. A Vermont corporation, Omega Optical, Inc. was formed January 1, 1969, the name chosen for its symbolic meaning of resistance, relating to an alternative approach to business.