Hello and Welcome! You’ve found the home of the Light Whisperer®!
Kerry Optical Systems, LLC, home of the Light Whisperer®, is a new high-tech optical equipment manufacturing and consulting firm located in the family-oriented community of Rexburg, ID. Why Rexburg? Located in the Upper Snake River Valley, 30 miles south of the Yellowstone caldera escarpment, and 50 miles west of the Grand Tetons, a more beautiful place is difficult to imagine.
Rexburg, with about 28,000 permanent residents, is home to BYU Idaho, a major university with over 34,000 degree-seeking students. The intellectual capital, creative energy, and entrepreneurial spirit found within the BYUI community is significant and distributed over many disciplines, much of it currently untapped within the permanent resident community: a situation we hope to help rectify!
Kerry Wilcken founded Kerry Optical Systems in 2018 after a 45-year career in optical and laser engineering and software engineering. Kerry’s skill set is wide ranging, with particular expertise in optical engineering and laser technology. Kerry holds fifteen technical patents, covering a range of fields including laser communications, and laser-based instrumentation for making precision optical measurements. Please visit the Experience Gallery to view some of the projects Kerry worked on.
This wide range of expertise is now focused on bringing innovative optical and laser-based products to the educational and optical manufacturing communities, and to professional and amateur astronomers.
Kerry Optical Systems’ flagship product, the SPPDI® (Split-path Point Diffraction Interferometer), was conceived in a conversation with a co-worker back in 1988. The co-worker suggested seeking patent protection for the SPPDI, which was accomplished in 1994 during a 2-year period when Kerry worked as an optical engineering consultant. A prototype of the SPPDI was developed and tested and found to yield excellent performance. Unfortunately, personal funds were too limited at that time to proceed with further development of the SPPDI.
An attempt was made to engage the services of New Focus, Inc., a Silicon Valley laser equipment company founded in 1992 by Dr. Milton Chang. The SPPDI was introduced as the “Wilcken Interferometer” on Page 52 in the 1995 issue of the New Focus catalog. Unfortunately, limited engineering resources at New Focus caused the abandonment of the effort to further develop and market the Wilcken Interferometer. With the Wilcken Interferometer back under Kerry’s control, it sat on the shelf for many years.
Kerry’s retirement from a major aerospace company provided the opportunity to resume part-time development of the SPPDI, while continuing to work part-time as a contract engineer. Termination of contract engineering finally afforded the opportunity to focus full-time on bringing the SPPDI to market readiness.
The success of the SPPDI will lead to opportunities for further work in developing and marketing novel optical products to serve the needs of the high-tech industry. Kerry Optical Systems, LLC is looking forward to expanding our product offerings in the future.
