Zygo Corporation

Zygo Corporation is a company that specializes in optical systems & equipment for areas such as optical metrology. Zygo's metrology systems are based on optical interferometry measuring displacement, surface figure, and optical wavefront. Metrology and optical markets for end-user and OEM applications include semiconductor capital equipment, aerospace/defense, automotive, and research.

Zygo Corporation is listed on NASDAQ and traded under the symbol ZIGO. It is headquartered at Middlefield, Connecticut, and has 484 employees worldwide.

Early history

ZYGO was founded in 1970 by Paul Forman, Carl Zanoni, and Sol Laufer, with financial support from Canon Inc. (Japan) and Wesleyan University (CT, USA). An initial priority for the Company was to build a world-class optical fabrication facility for producing optics with the highest precision plano surfaces and angles.

It was recognized that in order to achieve such a goal, practical and easy-to-use interferometry would have to be a standard part of the fabrication process. While there were several interferometers available on the market at that time, none had all the flexibility or features ZYGO considered important to their goal. So the decision was made to design an interferometer for in-house use. However, as the concepts for this new interferometer began to develop, ZYGO recognized that others might have a similar need, and the in-house breadboard interferometer was soon converted to a program to develop ZYGO's first product; the Model GH Interferometer, named for ZYGO's first non-founding employee, George Hunter.