The history of Convergent Photonics dates back in1961, shortly after the invention of the laser in 1960. The CO2 product line of Convergent can be traced to 1966, with the start-up of Coherent Radiation (Palo Alto, CA). Coherent founders demonstrated their fìrst CO2 laser at the Westcon exhibition in the fall of 1966. The first customer for the laser was the Boeing Co. where it was used “to investigate cutting and welding titanium”. In 1981, Laser Inc. began to purchase and assemble kits for CO2 lasers from Coherent and shortly thereafter, Coherent acquired Laser Inc., which became the industrial arm of Coherent, producing several models of slow flow CO2 lasers. Coherent General was formed in 1984 when General Electric made an investment in the company with the goal of obtaining a next generation Nd:YAG drilling laser. This business, which was now producing both CO2 and Nd:YAG industrial lasers, was sold to Transtec in 1993, but, as part of the acquisition, Transtec was required to change the name no longer using ‘Coherent’. The name Convergent Energy was then given to the laser business. During this same time, Transtec also acquired the rights for manufacturing and service of the Raytheon solid state laser products which had first appeared in the market also in the early 1960’s.