Historical Papers

Historical papers of interest to vacuum coaters, that are not otherwise readily available, will be placed in this section of the SVC Web Site. Visitors to the Web Site are invited to submit references to other similar meetings or discussions that they may have in their personal archives. Please send this information to the SVC Technical Director, Don Mattox at donmattox@svc.org.

1. The Application of Metallic Fluoride Reflection Reduction Films to Optical Elements. – PDF File – 1.6 MB

This is a Record of a Conference held at the Frankford Arsenal in October, 1943. The Record lists companies and individuals involved in the war time development and production of antireflection (AR) coatings on optics in the United States of America. The Record relates the discussions held at that conference. SVC gratefully acknowledges Collin Alexander who provided SVC with a copy of the Record.

2. Operation and Maintenance of Optical Coating Equipment – PDF File – 15.6 MB

“OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE OF OPTICAL COATING EQUIPMENT” – WAR OFFICE 1945

The complete text of TM 9-1501 “OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE OF OPTICAL COATING EQUIPMENT” the manual for optical coating published by the War Office in early 1945.  This document shows the state-of-the-art of coating optics as used during the last years of WWII.  The manual was loaned to SVC by Ric Shimshock.

3. A Discussion on "The Making of Reflecting Surfaces" – PDF File – 4.3 MB

This is the published record (Fleetwood Press) of a meeting of The Physical Society of London and The Optical Society held on the 26th of November, 1920. The papers are on both chemical formation of reflecting coatings and vacuum coating including plasma cleaning. On paper "A Bibliography of the More Important Papers on the Construction and Nature of Reflecting Surfaces" by R. Kanthack covers the history of making reflecting surfaces back to 1798. The original copy of this document was loaned by Don Mattox.