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Coherent, Inc.

company

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ1107088
Source-derived summary

Coherent, Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, California is an American company that develops, manufactures and supports laser equipment and related specialty components. Coherent was founded in May 1966 by physicist James Hobart and five cofounders. It went public in 1970. Over time, Coherent acquired other laser businesses and expanded to lasers for different industries and applications. From 2004 to 2021, it grew from $400 million to almost $2 billion in revenues, in part through a series of acquisitions. In 2022, II-VI Incorporated acquired Coherent, Inc. and took the name Coherent Corp.

Corporate history

Origins and early funding

Coherent, Inc. was founded in May 1966 by six engineers in Palo Alto, California under the name Coherent Radiation. Coherent was initially funded by the founders with $10,000 from their personal savings.

Editorial summary

“Coherent, Inc.” enters the record as company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Coherent and company can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1966, 1970, 2004, 2021—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1966. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Coherent and company.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Coherent, Inc.” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Coherent and company provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1107088. VIAF identifies the subject as 127835051. The Library of Congress control number is n80006607. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966, 1970, 2004 and 2021.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Coherent, Inc.”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Coherent, Inc. primary sources, Coherent, Inc. archive and Coherent research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Coherent, Inc.”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Coherent, Inc.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.