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Figure 1: Photonics laboratory infrastructure for device assembly, optical testing and characterization at Hamamatsu Photonics A / S( formerly NKT Photonics). Photograph courtesy of Hamamatsu Photonics A / S.
two years if NKT could supply it. The agreement helped turn technological promise into an industrial proposition: NKT began pilot production in 1980 and mass production the following year. Within less than a decade, an uncertain research direction had produced training, fabrication capability and industrial production, a pattern that would recur in later developments in Danish photonics.
From pioneering experiments to critical mass
By the 1980s, optical communications had grown beyond the small university activity of the previous decade. NKT moved from fiber production into complete transmission systems, establishing NKT Elektronik in 1981 with a core of engineers trained in Palle Jeppesen’ s DTU environment. The movement of people between DTU and NKT turned university expertise into industrial capability rather than leaving it confined to the laboratory.
A complementary research environment developed outside the university. The Telecommunications Research Laboratory, TFL, jointly operated by the Danish telephone companies, was expanded in the late 1980s into what contemporary accounts called a Danish“ mini Bell Lab”. Its role was to investigate technologies before they were commercially available. TFL developed III – V optoelectronic expertise and produced its first operating laser diode in January 1991. As the telecommunications sector was liberalized, the MOCVD equipment and much of the team moved to GIGA in 1996, transferring a rare Danish fabrication capability into industry.
Continuity required more than good ideas. In 1988, the Danish Technical Research Council established the Center for Broadband Telecommunications, CBT, at DTU, inspired partly by the US Engineering Research Center model. Multi-year funding created the critical mass needed to invest in equipment,
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