worldwide website cameca.com cameca is a manufacturer of scientific instruments namely material analysis instruments based on charged particle beam ions or electrons contents 1 history 2 the company in 2011 3 references 4 external links history edit the company was founded as a subsidiary of compagnie g n rale de la t l graphie sans fil csf en 1929 as radio cin ma at the time of the emergence of the talkies . the job was to design and manufacture movie projectors for big cinema screening rooms 1 after world war ii spurred on by maurice ponte director of csf and a future member of the french academy of sciences the company manufactures scientific instruments developed in university french laboratories spark spectrometer at the beginning of the 1950s castaing microprobe from 1958 then secondary ion analysers from 1968 . also in the early 1950s settles the company in the factory of courbevoie boulevard saint denis where it will remain more than fifty years . the spark spectrometer was abandoned at the end of the 1950s . 1 the name of cameca standing for compagnie des applications m caniques et electroniques au cin ma et l atomistique was given in 1954 . the business of movie projectors has been stopped soon after 1960 but in the 1960s there is a short lived revival of the film business through the adventure of the scopitone . 1 2 from 1977 year of the launching of the ims3f cameca has a virtual monopoly in the field of magnetic sims while it must share the market castaing microprobe with japanese competitors including jeol . semiconductor industry is a very important outlet for magnetic sims . at the end of the 20th century cameca gets a foothold in a third analytical technique tomographic atom probe . 1 in 1987 cameca left the thomson csf group and was subject to a leveraged buyout operation led by its management and its employees . in 2001 the company was sold to a small french private equity fund and then to another private equity fund controlled by carlyle group . this last owner sold again cameca to ametek and ametek subsequently merged it with imago scientific instruments in 2010 . 1 from 1975 the number of employee has been about 200 . subsidiaries were created in united states japan korea ta wan and germany . these subsidiaries were engaged in commercial and maintenance activities and employ a few dozen people . 1 the company in 2011 edit in 2011 according to the website of the company its business can be shared into two different markets scientific instruments dedicated to research activities and metrology for the semiconductor industry . this last market addresses semiconductor fabrication cleanrooms with a dedicated version of the castaing electron probe based on the lexes technique low energy electron induced x ray emission spectrometry developed at the beginning of the 21st century . cameca instruments are well known in academic communities including the fields of geochemistry and planetary science that had earned the company to be cited dozens of times in scientific journals such as nature or science . in 2010 ametek purchased the wisconsin start up imago scientific instruments and attached it to cameca . 3 cameca holds therefore the monopoly in the manufacturing of atom probe instruments with the leap brand name . references edit a b c d e f emmanuel de chambost a history of cameca 1954 2009 in advances in imaging and electron physics vol .167 2011 pp. 1 119 isbn 978 0 12 385985 3 jean charles scagnetti l aventure scopitone 1957 1983 paris editions autrement coll . m moires culture 2010 isbn 978 2 7467 1396 3 p. 10 17 and p. 27 45 imago sold to pennsylvania company wisconsin state journal 8 avril 2010 external links edit cameca website the history of cameca in french retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title cameca & oldid 689384904 categories instrument making corporationsmanufacturing companies of franceequipment semiconductor companiestechnology companies of francefrench brands navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages deutschfran aisportugu s edit links this page was last modified on 6 november 2015 at 20 15 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view