Newport Corporation is proud to build upon the heritage of technical excellence that began when Bausch & Lomb produced its first high-quality master grating in the late 1940s. A high-fidelity replication process was subsequently developed to make duplicates of the tediously generated master gratings. This process became the key to converting diffraction gratings from academic curiosities to commercially-available optical components, which in turn enabled gratings to essentially replace prisms as the optical dispersing element of choice in modern laboratory instrumentation.

For several years, since its introduction in 1970, the Diffraction Grating Handbook was the primary source of information of a general nature regarding diffraction gratings. In 1982, Dr. Michael Hutley of the National Physical Laboratory published Diffraction Gratings, a monograph that addresses in more detail the nature and uses of gratings, as well as their manufacture. In 1997, Dr. Erwin Loewen, emeritus director of the Bausch & Lomb grating laboratory who wrote the original Handbook thirty-five years ago, wrote with Dr. Evgeny Popov a very thorough and complete monograph entitled Diffraction Gratings and Applications. Readers of this Handbook who seek additional insight into the many aspects of diffraction grating behavior, manufacture and use are encouraged to turn to these two books.