TESCAN

TESCAN is one of the world's leading manufacturers of Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM), Focused Ion Beam-Scanning Electron Microscopes (FIB-SEM), Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopes (STEM), and microcomputed tomography (microCT). TESCAN serves customers in materials science, geosciences, life sciences and semiconductor markets. Company is located in Brno (Czech Republic), which is considered to be the cradle of electron microscopy in Europe.

History
The history of electron microscope production in Czechoslovakia dates back to the 1950s when a team led by Armin Delong in Brno started to produce electron microscopes. One of the first successful microscopes was the Tesla BS 242 model, which won a gold medal at the EXPO 1958. During its 30-year existence, Tesla produced over 3,000 different models of microscopes which were exported to over 20 countries.

After the Velvet Revolution, Tesla was divided into several smaller companies. Some of them still operate in the electron microscope market. One of these companies is TESCAN which was founded in 1991 by former Tesla development and service employees. The name TESCAN was derived from the words TESla and SCANning (scanning – screening).

TESCAN originally manufactured programmable controllers, digitizers for older analog scanning electron microscopes, and other small accessories.

In 2020, 3000 was installed at the University of Freiburg, Germany. TESCAN has now produced over 3,000 SEMs and FIB-SEMs.

Holding structure
In 2013, TESCAN ORSAY HOLDING was established following the merger of the Czech company TESCAN, a leading global developer and supplier of scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) and focused ion beam (FIB) workstations, and the French company ORSAY PHYSICS, a world leader in customized Focused Ion Beam and Electron Beam technology.

The headquarters of the TESCAN ORSAY HOLDING is located in Brno, The Czech Republic. This location serves as the base for production and research and development of all microscopes. From this, about 95% of the total production is exported to locations all over the world via local subsidiaries and distributors.

TESCAN ORSAY HOLDING comprises 7 subsidiaries located in Europe, Asia and the Americas that together employ almost 500 people. TESCAN manufactures about 250 microscopes per year yielding  revenue of approximately US$80 million per annum.