Taylor Hobson is an English company founded in 1886, located in Leicester, England. Initially a manufacturer of cameras and cine lenses, it now manufactures precision metrology instruments; in particular, profilometers for the analysis of surface texture and form.
Taylor Hobson is now part of Ametek's Ultra Precision Technologies Group.
1886 – The company is founded by Thomas Smithies Taylor, an optician, and his brother Herbert William Taylor, an engineer, to make lenses. The company was initially based in Slate Street but subsequently moved to Stoughton Street Works in Leicester.
1887 – W.S.H Hobson joins the company as the sales face of Taylor, Taylor & Hobson ("TTH").
1893 – The company produces its first Cooke lens. The name Cooke came to TTH after an agreement with Cooke of York, who licensed some of their designs to TTH.
1902 – A third brother, J. Ronald Taylor, opens a branch in New York, with the principal customer being the Eastman Kodak Company.
1914 – the company is reported as manufacturers of Photographic Lenses and other Optical Goods; Engraving Machinery and other Fine Tools, Golf Ball Moulds, Time recording Clocks.
1914-1918 – The Aviar lens, developed for aerial photography, contributes to the allies air force supremacy. The company designs and begins to manufacture machines for the accurate polishing of lenses, and makes it possible to produce large numbers of such lenses for binoculars. William Taylor devises new methods of lens manufacture for aerial photography, and produces lenses for range finders, gun sights, rifle bores, and telescopes.
1919 – William Taylor is awarded an OBE. The King visits the Stoughton Street Works on 10th June 1919.
1932 – TTH produces the first Cooke zoom lens for cinematography. William Taylor is made President of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.
1936 – William Taylor is made Honorary Life Member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers
1937 – William Taylor dies.
1938 –Thomas Smithies Taylor resigns as director.
1939 – Taylor Hobson supplies over 80% of the world's lenses in film studios.
William Taylor was convinced that to be a leader in optics, he needed to have the best understanding and control of the surface quality of his lenses. As a result, he started to design instruments capable of helping him evaluate surface texture and roundness. Other manufacturers in various domains saw his instruments and demanded him to sell them the same. He refused as the invented instruments were crucial to Taylor Hobson's optical lense supremacy. Eventually, when the company decided to market the instruments, Taylor Hobson became the instrument manufacturer that is known today.
1941 – Taylor Hobson creates the first true surface texture measuring instrument, the Talysurf 1, opening the way to Surface finish analysis.
1946 – Taylor Hobson becomes part of the Rank Organisation.
1949 – Taylor Hobson invents the world's first roundness measuring instrument, the Talyrond 1.
1951 – Taylor Hobson develops a micro-alignment telescope.
1965 – Taylor Hobson introduces the Surtronic range, a handheld roughness meter that is easier to use in the shop floor, thanks to a skid pick-up. The skid pick-up loses the large waves of the surface texture (waviness and form) as the skid follows the general form of the surface, but has the major advantage of allowing the easy assessment of roughness without requiring spending time leveling a datum line to set the sensor in range.
1966 – Taylor Hobson introduces the TalyStep, that has been a reference during about two decades for the ultra-precise, low contact force measurement of step height with applications in the then raising semiconductor industry.
1969 – Taylor Hobson acquires the optical company Hilger and Watts.
1984 – Taylor Hobson introduces the Form Talysurf, that associates a range of several millimeters to a nanometric resolution, opening the way of measuring both roughness and form at the same time.
1992 – Taylor Hobson receives the Queen's award for technological achievement from the hands of Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire during an official ceremony.
1995 – an original small 3D texture, contact scanner, looking like a computer mouse, the TalyScan, is introduced (not to be confused with the TalyScan 150 and 250 introduced later, of a more classical design using slides to move the component and a fix sensor).
1996 – The Form TalySurf PGI introduces sub-nanometer accuracy using a phase grating interferometer as the height sensor principle as an alternative to inductive pick-ups, but still on a contact pick-up touching the surface, and hence independent of the optical properties of the measured surface (as demonstrates the company's early history, this surface can for instance be an optical lens).
1996 – Schroeder Ventures acquire Taylor Hobson from the Rank Organisation.
1996 – Taylor Hobson is the first metrology manufacturer to adopt the Mountains software technology from Digital Surf that associates a desk top publishing tool to metrology results issued by instruments. The collaboration allows Taylor Hobson to introduce the TalyMap 3D surface texture analysis software as an option to the TalySurf profilers and the TalyProfile 2D surface texture analysis software as an option to the Surtronic roughness testers.
1998 – The historical activity of the company, Cooke lenses, leaves Taylor Hobson as part of a buy out that creates the company Cooke Optics.
2003 – Taylor Hobson introduces their first optical field profiler (i.e. based on a microscope), the TalySurf CCI, as a complement to their existing scanning 3D profilometers based on styli or non-contact single-point sensors.
2004 – Taylor Hobson becomes part of Ametek's Ultra Precision Technologies Group.
2007 – The TalyRond 395, a fully automated roundness and cylindricity instrument introduces a new trend of automated, multiple measurements (such as surface texture and roundness) on the same instrument.
