Another Thought About Opt...

Thinking about "The Thinker"

 There was a time when (no shocker) eMagin's future was very much in doubt. The Technology was too sophisticated, too expensive. OLED suffered from short lifetime, burn-in, embarrassingly low yields, low demand. Thinking about this reminds me just how dicey things were. In the midst there was Opt. And there was Sagem/Felin. Opt did, I did not realize the importance of FELIN, Soldier Modernization in France.  I thought the Suite was a good fit for eMagin displays and took for granted eMagin would eventually dominate the the market. So I peddled some flummery here. I assumed Land Warrior in the States was a slam dunk after the Strykers seemed to embrace it in their Brigade exercises at Lewis-McChord. I did not know that behind the scenes Ralph Osterhout was working the Pentagon to cancel the program. The Generals listened to Ralph. So it was the American Made OLED displays that eventually ended up in the Rifle Scopes and HUDs of the French Foreign Legion that turned out to be THE critical program that gave eMagin just enough cash and credibility to survive. Without it this company would be a footnote at Display Daily
 And Opt watched that program more closely than than the French Ministry of Defense. He dug and questioned until he was satisfied that the program would survive. He would get jittery if he saw some vulnerability in the Sagem/eMagin partnership. He held fast. He was nails. He provided us the highest resolution, FOV and visual acuity. Ha! Thinking of it now he is the one who provided us the greatest Situational Awareness.