The Optical Society (OSA) history

1918"Journal of the Optical Society of America" (JOSA) was established.

On 26 August 1920, the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

Photo: OSA Annual Meeting 1921.

Photo: A license for a radio receiver granted by the British Post Office on November 3, 1922.

1924"Helmholtz Physiological Optics" translation published.

Photo: Metropolis 1927 logo

1-3, 1928 : catalog of the optical exhibition at the National Bureau of Standards, October 31 to November 3, 1928

In the United States, "Black Friday" ushers in the Wall Street stock market collapse of October 1929, and heralds the onset of a worldwide economic slump that would last for a decade, until the beginning of World War II.

Photo: Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933

Photo: Map showing origins of OSA members in 1938

The 1940 meeting marked the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Rochester Association for the Advancement of Applied Optics, OSA's precursor organization.

The committee, originally vetted in 1947, was set up with a funding authorization of US $10,000 to tackle the difficult problem of color standards.

The first issue of the magazine—established by AIP for distribution to members of all member societies, including OSA—began with an article called “Trends in American Science” by Vannevar Bush, and included a recap of the 1948 OSA winter meeting.

A new committee of 14 OSA members is tasked with bringing the society's out-of-print report on color up to date. It is the first step on a 20-year road that will lead, in 1953, to the publication of the landmark work The Science of Color.

The first medal was presented to Tillyer himself in 1954.

At the Ann Arbor Conference on Optical Pumping, University of Michigan, USA, Gordon Gould first publicly uses the word "laser"—a term he had coined in lab notes at the end of 1957.

Photo Credit: Dan Rubin, June 1958

OSA's Board moves forward with plans to publish a translated edition of a Russian language journal (translated title Optics and Spectroscopy, with the first publication to appear in 1959.

1960"Applied Optics" first published.

At a dinner session at OSA's March 1962 meeting, a new OSA honor, the C.E.K. Mees International Medal, is announced.

Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (1963- )

Awarded 1964 Frederic Ives Medal.

Optical Society of America 50th annual meeting in Philadelphia, 1965.

Photo: Charles Kao in an optics laboratory at Standard Telecommunications Laboratories circa 1966, when he made crucial and extremely difficult measurements showing that pure silica had extremely low loss

Photo: Charles Kao in an optics laboratory at Standard Telecommunications Laboratories circa 1968, when he made crucial and extremely difficult measurements showing that pure silica had extremely low loss.

Optical Society of America annual meeting in Tucson, 1971.

Photo: Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first publicized handheld mobile phone call on a prototype DynaTAC model on April 4, 1973.

Photo: On June 26, 1974, the first product with the Universal Product Code barcode was scanned at a checkout counter.

1975"Optical News" began publication six times a year.

Photo Credit: Nadia Comaneci 1976 Paraguay stamp.

1977"Optics Letters" first published.

At the 1978 OSA annual meeting in San Francisco, CA., USA, the “long awaited” volume—a joint publishing project of OSA and McGraw-Hill—is makes its first public appearance.

G-BOAF flying over the Bristol area before final landing on the Filton (Bristol) runway from which she first flew in 1979.

Panel discussion on the development of the laser and nonlinear optics [sound recording], 1982 October 20.

Oral history interview with Nicolaas Bloembergen, 1983 June 27.

1984"Journal of the Optical Society of America" (JOSA) was split into two journals: JOSA A and JOSA B.

1985"Optics News" began monthly publication.

Construction begins on the iconic barrier between East and West Berlin, which will remain standing until 1989.

1990"Optics News" became "Optics & Photonics News" (OPN).

Kary Mullis develops the polymerase chain reaction—sometimes called “molecular photocopying—a technique to create thousands of copies of a specific sequence of DNA. He would win the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work.

Photo: Hubble Deep Field (full mosaic) released by NASA on January 15, 1996.

1997"Optics Express," the first all-electronic journal was launched and "Optics Letters" was launched online.

1998"JOSA A," "JOSA B," and "Applied Optics" launched online.

The first edition will go through eight printings, the last in 1999.

Foreign Member and awarded Frederic Ives Medal (2000).

2001"Journal of Optical Networking" (JON) launched.

Photo: OSA 2002 President Anthony M. Johnson

The achievement is about 100 W higher than previous records set in 2004.

2005"Journal of Display Technology" launched in partnership with Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Photo: Participants at the first IONS meeting at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, in January 2006.

2009"Journal of Optical Communications and Networking" launched in partnership with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

2010"Biomedical Optics Express" journal and the "Energy Express" supplement to Optics Express launched.

2011"Optical Materials Express" journal launched.

OSA's ties with OIDA will evolve in subsequent years; by 2015, OIDA will be relaunched as OSA Industry Development Associates, becoming a channel for OSA membership, participation and leadership across optics and photonics industries.

2016 marked the 100th anniversary of the Optical Society.

The inaugural March for Science was a series of rallies and marches held in Washington, D.C., and more than 600 other cities across the world on Earth Day, April 22, 2017.

In 2018, they shared 1/2 of the Nobel Prize in Physics “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses."