Taylor Hobson is proud of its position as a world leader in the design, development and supply of precision metrology equipment. Few other manufacturers can claim such an enviable record of achievement in the precision field – and we've been doing it since 1886!
Taylor Hobson's story begins with the vision of the Victorian entrepreneur, William Taylor, who founded a lens making company with his brother in Leicester in 1886. He was responsible for developing the world's highest quality cinema lenses which helped to develop the film industry in the early twentieth century.
The reliability and reputation of Taylor Hobson products were achieved through rigorous quality control methods. This led to the creation of a new product group for the company – component inspection – and in doing so began the demand for the metrology instruments that make Taylor Hobson the world renowned company it is today.
"Never waste time in making what other people make. Devise something new that they have not thought of."
William Taylor
Taylor Hobson began in 1886 when brothers William and Thomas Smithies Taylor started a company to make lenses. William Taylor was the genius of the company and believed that it wasn't worth starting to make a product before you could measure it.
This led him to examine the processes of lens making and the methods of grinding and polishing glass. It would be another 50 years before the comp
As Taylor Hobson began to manufacture more accurate lenses, we realised that we needed instruments that would measure the perfection of each lens.
Without anything else on the market, Taylor Hobson resorted to what they knew best - they invented something themselves, the first Talysurfs and Talyronds, which led the inspection and measurement industry for years to come.
As the innovators and market leaders in surface finish and roundness measurement, we now applied our technology to develop a new batch of industry leading products. These included optical instruments and in 1969 we acquired the optical company Hilger and Watts.
Still leading the way, we continued to develop new products which still dominate the inspection industry today. None more so than the Form Talysurf which, for the first time, allowed metrologists to measure surface texture, form and dimensional relationships with a single traverse of the measuring instrument.
In 2000, Taylor Hobson entered a new phase of innovative product design. New instrument design concepts were employed in the new product development cycle. This created products that combined advanced engineering with impressive instrument styling.
2003 represented one of Taylor Hobson's most exciting years with the launch of the revolutionary Talysurf CCI 3000 non contact profilometer with a vertical resolution of 10 picometers (0.01 nanometers, and a completely revised range of surface products.
On 18th June 2004 Taylor Hobson was acquired by AMETEK Inc a US corporation based in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, and is now part of AMETEK's Ultra Precision Technologies Group.
