Optelecom
Optelecom was founded by William Culver and Gordon Gould in 1972 to build products that utilized his inventions related to the laser, the acronym for Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation. The product line included optical amplifiers, fiber optic communications equipment, traffic monitoring equipment and security.
Dr. Culver came to Optelecom from IBM in the Quantum Electronics Department, andDr. Gould came from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, today known as the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. Optelecom’s first contract came from the U.S. Army Missile Command in Huntsville, Alabama, dubbed the “rocket on a string,” the string being a fiber-optic cable. Gould oversaw the research and development of components and systems for optical amplification and wave mixing. He and his colleagues invented a multiplexer using optical fiber as a light pipe in hopes of carrying approximately 1,000 or more television channels. In 1983, They were joined in 1983 by Dr. David Huber, who brought his expertise in optical amplification. In 1993, Optelecom, Dr. Huber and Spencer Trask & Co Chairman, Kevin Kimberlin, chartered a company to build wave division multiplexing (WDM) systems. As a founding shareholder of Hydralite, Inc., later renamed Ciena Corp., Optelecom provided initial management oversight, and financial and operational support to expand the capacity of cable systems to 50,000 channels. With this help, Ciena deployed the first dense WDM system, the technology responsible for the dramatic increase in optical communication capacity for fiber optic networks.
Optelecom continued its own focus on advanced surveillance technologies. In 2005, Optelecom acquired NKF Electronics of the Netherlands, a wholly owned subsidiary of Draka Holding N.V. Then, in 2011, TKH Group of Haaksbergen acquired Optelecom and collectively changed its name to Siqura. Siqura tailors integrated video monitoring solutions for its clients, with the goal of enhancing security through video clarity.