Filmetrics, Inc. was founded in 1995 with the mission of making thin-film measurements simple and affordable. Prior to our arrival, commercial thin-film measurement instruments cost $50,000 or more and required operators to have advanced training. Single measurements took several minutes, even hours. The Filmetrics approach was to design an affordable purpose-built miniature spectrometer system, whose low cost had just recently been made possible by advances in silicon detector array technology. We combined this with sophisticated software that integrated advanced thin-film expertise into a simple, intuitive Windows interface. The result was the F20, a compact system with astounding speed and accuracy, which line operators could be trained to use in a matter of minutes - all at a mere f ...