Spectrogon derives its origin partly from research conducted at the Royal Institute of Technology, a leading Swedish technical university, and partly from research and development projects at AGA Innovation Center. AGA Innovation Center comprised of laboratories for long-term research and development of AGA AB, a major Swedish industrial group.

During the late 1960's and early 1970's several research programs were directed towards electro-optics. In 1980 the AGA Group changed its strategy and brought together the various high technology and electro-optics businesses to form a new group, Pharos AB. AGA Innovation Center's thin film optics projects where transferred to a new subsidiary of Pharos, AGA Optical, which eventually became Spectrogon in 1984. Spectrogon AB became an independent company on June 28, 1991, when the existing management organised an employee buyout.

Spectrogon has established operating businesses in three different countries:

• Spectrogon AB headquartered in Täby, Sweden, is housed at 2200 square meter modern manufacturing facility for thin film products employing 60 persons for R&D, production, sales and marketing in Europe, Asia and Australia
• Spectrogon AB in Arninge, just 5 minutes with car from the headquarters, a new manufacturing facility employing 20 persons for holographic gratings and thin film products
• Spectrogon UK, Ltd., in Glenrothes, Scotland is a wholly owned subsidiary. It employs 3 persons for sales and marketing in Great Britain, Ireland, France, Netherlands and Belgium
• Spectrogon US, Inc., in Parsippany, New Jersey, USA, is a wholly owned subsidiary and employs 3 persons for sales and marketing to the North American photonics market

Spectrogon's thin film optical products function from the wavelength regions of 200 nm in the ultraviolet to 20 000 nm in the infrared. The holographic diffraction gratings function from the very short wavelengths in the UV region to approximately 3 000 nm in the infrared.

The thin film optical product line includes: various types of interference filters - narrow bandpass, broad bandpass, long-wave and short-wave pass and neutral density. Other optical products are: beamsplitters, anti-reflective coatings, mirror coatings and specialised thin film coatings. The holographic grating product line includes: plane and concave, replicated and blazed.

Measurement techniques in industrial manufacturing have a decisive influence on productivity: "nothing can be made better than it can be measured". Optical methods are finding increasing applications in this field. The fact that these methods can be non-destructive, remote, accurate and very flexible offers many advantages.

A beam of light impinging on an object, such as a plastic film, will be partly transmitted, reflected and absorbed by the film. This quantity and concentration of light and the way it varies wavelengths, is a unique property of a substance and can be used for identification and measurement. An example, the thickness of a plastic foil can be measured on-line in a production process.

The characteristics of the light beams used in these measurements will ultimately determine the quality of the results achievable. Spectrogon's components are used to define these beams and therefore have a key function in the measurement chain and in many cases for the functioning of very large and sensitive production equipment.

Spectrogon's basic business concept is:" to provide competitive state-of-the-art optical components and sub-systems, based on interference and/or diffraction for controlling light, primarily in measurement applications."

Spectrogon's most important markets are Western Europe and North America. A major portion of invoiced sales - more than 80 %, goes to original equipment manufacturer (OEM's) in specialised electro-optics markets. These specialised markets include: instrumentation for medical diagnostics, industrial process control, robotics, environmental measurements, optical communications and various other related analytical instrumentation.