20-Year Anniversary of RP Photonics in 2024
20 years have passed since RP Photonics was founded! Now we are celebrating our continued success. RP Photonics has become one of the most prominent companies in the photonics industry and is widely recognized as a supporter of the entire photonics community.
The History of RP Photonics
At the end of May 2004, RP Photonics Consulting GmbH was founded by Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta – at that time in Zurich, Switzerland. After a successful career as a researcher, he now offered technical consulting in photonics: services such as feasibility studies, independent assessments, problem solving and staff training. One of the challenges of this start-up was that Dr. Paschotta had a good reputation as a laser physicist in the scientific community, but was not well known in the laser industry, his new target audience.
In September 2004, the first version of the Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology was posted on the company's website. In 2008, the encyclopedia was published by Wiley-VCH as a two volume book, containing 555 articles on 844 pages.
In the following years, the encyclopedia was expanded to cover most of the field of photonics; currently there are 1046 articles. The encyclopedia has become extremely popular; typically receiving well over 200,000 page views per month, it is the main driver of traffic to the RP Photonics website.
From the very beginning, a particular strength of RP Photonics has been its powerful simulation software. Initially, this was used only for consulting, i.e. to calculate results for customers. Later, the sale of software user licenses was expanded more and more rapidly. Today, a wide range of companies, universities and research institutes use RP Photonics simulation and design software – most often the RP Fiber Power product, which has become the market leader in this field. Originally designed for cw and pulsed fiber lasers and amplifiers, it is now also very useful for designing ultrafast lasers and amplifiers, various passive fiber devices, and even many bulk lasers. In 2022, we hired Dr. Gareth Moore to mainly support software development, and in 2023, we made a small step forward in usability by introducing several Power Forms.
In 2010, RP Photonics moved to Bad Dürrheim in southern Germany (about 100 km north of Zurich), and in 2022 we moved back to Switzerland – we are now located in Frauenfeld, not far from Lake Constance and Zurich.
In the summer of 2012, the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide was established on the website. Being closely related to the RP Photonics Encyclopedia, it benefited from the enormous user community of that resource and had substantial traffic from the very beginning. Within a few years, it was recognized by many as the best advertising tool in the field of photonics. Photonics marketing has become the main business for RP Photonics, but simulation software remains important.
Although the technical consulting business is no longer as important for our turnover, Dr. Paschotta still enjoys doing staff training on specialized topics in the form of customized courses, often at the customer's site. Companies are increasingly realizing that the competence of their employees is essential to their continued success, and that there is hardly a more effective way to improve it than through such courses.
You can be sure that RP Photonics will continue to develop dynamically for the benefit of the community worldwide!