If it were easy, everyone would build instruments from the software up.

Researchers are not generally instrumentalists. They have to trust manufacturers to produce and support the instruments that have direct and inescapable consequences for their careers.

Most manufacturers want to mass produce instruments to a wide audience. Designed-in obsolescence is a given. Innovation and excellence are rare.

And then there is our way. Where innovation and excellence are the norm and instruments are endlessly upgradable. Our powerful implementation of software is a key factor. Computerizing research spectrophotometers was our only focus from 1976-1991.

We joke with real seriousness that “Hardware is a complication that houses the sample and produces the signal. Everything else should be done by a computer.”

Developer, Dr. Richard J. DeSa, with an Olis CLARiTY

our instruments was that they lasted forever, without any hope for service. But one day we heard about a new company, OLIS Instruments. It sounded unbelievable, because it not only would allow us to preserve our instruments, but more so, have them modernized, with a computer attached, allowing us to forget about the use of pen recorders, but also, through the years, enjoy the growing possibilities to process the data and refined our findings.

So we started to seek for the funds necessary to modernize our equipments, and in the process, for some reason, one day we decided to go to Bogart GA and see by ourselves the origin and structure of that miracle. We were surprised at first, the place was not very small, but also not that of the very large companies we were used to see. But perhaps the most pleasant an original surprise was that OLIS Inc was an enterprise, requiring of course, the mastermind of Richard DeSa, who progressively moved from the modernization of different types of equipments, to develop more and more elaborate ones, such as the RSM 1000, and the most recent, the OLIS CLARiTY. But most interesting was that, particularly during its first years, OLIS was operated by a group which is not only remarkable as such, but a wonderful family followed by an extraordinary community.

I want to mention a particular experience with Dr. DeSa: while trying to get the modernization of one of our equipment, we could not raise the funds to complete the full cost. I wrote him, and he gave me a very substantial discount, for which I have always been grateful, but also shows one of his important personal characteristics: generosity before business.

With the modernization of our first spectrophotometer we had the fortune that the whole modification was installed by Richard DeSa himself, who came with his wife, and had the opportunity to visit the pyramids of Teotihuacan. It has been many years that we have enjoyed the attention, support and kindness, not only from the DeSa’s, but also from each and everyone, not employees, but members of a community. So, I end up by wishing the best to OLIS, but more than that, to the wonderful DeSa family and thanking heaven for having put them in my way, an all my admiration to Richard DeSa.

Today, we offer you a full line of UV/Vis and NIR absorbance, fluorescence, circular dichroism, circularly polarized luminescence, and phosphorescence lifetime spectrometers, all of which expand your opportunities for worthwhile measurements, lower cost experiments, and your best opportunity for brilliant breakthroughs.