Polar Reversal In Optical Telescopes and Electronic Imagers Industry
For decades after the Second World War, and throughout the period of the Cold War, the U.S. has enjoyed a position of monopoly if not supremacy in the sector of astronomical instruments, both in the optical telescopes and electronic detectors.
This situation was comparable to the monopolistic position of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas in the civilian transport air industry.
The big names were
Celestron and
Meade.
Celestron
The predecessor of Celestron was Valor Electronics, an electronics and military components firm founded in 1955 by Tom Johnson. Johnson became involved with telescopes when he built a 6" reflecting telescope for his two sons. In 1960, Johnson established the "Astro-Optical" division of Valor, which would later become Celestron.
By 1964, Johnson had founded "Celestron Pacific" as a division of Valor Electronics offering Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes from 4" to 22". In 1970 Celestron introduced its "C8" 8" diameter 2032 mm focal length, ƒ10 telescope, the first of a new line of telescopes built using methods developed by Celestron to produce Schmidt-Cassegrains at a high volume and low cost. These models made significant inroads into the amateur astronomical and educational communities.
Johnson, the founder of the company, sold Celestron in 1980. Celestron was acquired by Tasco in 1997 and almost went out of business when Tasco folded in 2001.
In early 2002 Celestron's rival, Meade Instruments, attempted a takeover but a bankruptcy court allowed the sale of the company back to its original owners. The company had been U.S. owned until April 2005 when it was acquired by SW Technology Corporation, a Delaware company and affiliate of Synta Technology Corporation of Taiwan. Synta is a manufacturer of astronomy equipment and related components and at that time had been a supplier for Celestron for over 15 years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestron
Meade Instruments
Since their founding in 1972, Meade Instruments has been one of Celestron's chief rivals. Design, sizing, introduction, and pricing of each company's products lines and models have been in response to their competition with each other. There has been litigation over infringement of patents between the two companies, one instance regarding GoTo technology.
In September 2013, Sunny Optics Inc, a unit of the Chinese firm Ningbo Sunny Electronic Co Ltd, completed the acquisition of the entire share capital of Meade.
On November 26, 2019, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California a federal jury found that Ningbo and Meade suppressed competition and fixed prices for consumer telescopes in the United States in violation of federal antitrust laws (case# 16-06370). Optronic Technologies, Inc. was awarded $16.8 million in damages.
On December 4, 2019, Meade Instruments Corp. filed bankruptcy in the United States District Court for the Central District of California as case number 19-14714.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meade_Instruments
Then after the end of the Cold War,
Suzhou Synta Optical Technology, a company that was founded in 1988 as Synta Optics, and at first producing only eyepieces, started in 1992 to produce their first telescopes 114 mm Newtonian, distributed by Celestron and Tasco.
In 1993, the first refracting telescopes were produced.
In 1999, the brand Sky-Watcher was established by Synta Taiwan to sell optics produced by Suzhou Synta. The head office was in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. The brand is distributed in Canada and Europe and, in the late 2000s, extended to the U.S. market.
Products produced by Suzhou Synta are also distributed under the Acuter name and via the Synta Taiwan owned subsidiary company Celestron. Suzhou Synta also manufactures products for Orion Telescopes & Binoculars.
And the same patern in the electronic imagers, with
SBIG's position starting to falter!
ZW Optical
ZWO is a world-renowned company focusing on the development of innovative products in the field of astrophotography. They specialize in the production of CMOS cameras, smart astro imaging devices and astrophotography accessories. The company was founded by Sam Wen in November 2011, with its headquarters based in the Chinese city of Suzhou.
Sam Wen is an amateur astronomer with a love of planetary imaging, and it was this interest that drove him to create ZWO. Sam was dissatisfied with the planetary cameras available in 2011, which were mainly based on internet webcams, so he created the world’s first dedicated planetary CMOS camera, the ASI130MM. This camera was a huge success and created a market hungry for ZWO products.
https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/contact-us
Sam Wen of ZW Optical on 11th July 2016 explains:
The trend is moving to CMOS, and we believe that CMOS will eventually replace CCD for most applications. CMOS sensors have higher QE (quantum efficiency), faster read times, and they are less expensive than CCD. They are also getting less noisy, which is very important for astrophotography. CMOS is taking over for planetary imaging, and it will be not too long before it takes a leading role in deep-sky imaging as well.
https://astronomyconnect.com/forums/articles/sam-wen-of-zw-optical-vendor-profile.29/
Conclusion
This means that after
Quantum Computers, China has further shattered the core of the U.S. Empire, that is its technological supremacy, and is preparing to storm what remains of the U.S. hegemonic world order!
But did they ever stand a chance? Both Mongols, Manchus and all European colonizers landgrabbers and squatters have yielded invariably in the past, absorbed into the Chinese cultural fabric.
Today, with China's 100 millions tonnes of Rare Earth Elements (RRE) reserves, both the U.S. and U.S.S.R., the two former partners of the Cold War are left far behind China in the high tech race, having exhausted all their REE reserves!
What an epochal era we are witnessing! The Climatic Warming induced rise of the
Subtropical Earth, and all the subtropical pandemics to follow, that has in less than a year already nearly wiped out all the G-8 economic powerhouses, ethnic Europeans first, and now this polar reversal in the high tech sector!
Thanks to Iran, Russia et al., whose relentless pumping of hydrocarbon has made in little less than 75 years, the hastening of the Climatic Warming a reality.
This is the beginning of a new chapter in mankind history, the dying Pax Americana being finally supeseded by the Pax Sinica, a new World Order known as the China Century or the
2045 Great Replacement!
What an epochal Polar Reversal in the optical industry, when one remembers that the PRC started the production of its first optical instruments, right after the Korean War, by polishing lenses from the glass bottom of Coca Cola bottle drinks left by the U.S. G.I.s!
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