Day of Photonics 2026

Today, 21 October, is the Day of Photonics.

The date marks the day in 1983 when the General Conference on Weights and Measures fixed the speed of light at exactly 299,792,458 m/s. The European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC) started the Day of Photonics in 2014 to make the field more visible outside labs and companies.

For us at art photonics, it is also a good day to thank the people we work with: researchers, process engineers and laser developers who take our fibers into their reactors, labs and production lines, and who regularly bring us applications that a standard fiber cannot handle.

Our corner of photonics lies beyond the red end of the spectrum. In 1800, William Herschel placed a thermometer just past the red light from a prism and measured a higher temperature than in the visible colours. It was the first evidence of infrared radiation, light that we feel as warmth but cannot see.

More than two centuries later, most of what we make in Berlin exists to bring that light to places where it is otherwise hard to measure or deliver. Our fiber-optic ATR and Raman probes are used for in-line process monitoring, our mid-IR fiber cables guide the beams of quantum cascade lasers, and our fiber delivery systems carry 10.6 µm CO₂ laser radiation. Behind all of them are our specialty fibers: chalcogenide and polycrystalline (PIR) fibers for the mid-infrared, and silica fibers for the UV to NIR range.

Happy Day of Photonics to our customers, partners and everyone working with light, in research and in industry.