Check out our fun, new video featuring our five-decade journey to see what products started it all and how far technology has come.

What's important to you in an industrial automation supplier? We often hear about reliability, innovation, and long-term support being at the top of that list. Rest assured, Opto 22's product philosophy incorporates all those ideals. 

You can feel secure in your product designs and confident in a manufacturer who is here to help support and achieve all your long-term project goals. 

Whether you’re looking for a product to take you to the next level of control and data communications, want a reliable automation system proven over many years, or just need another SSR to accompany that dusty, guaranteed-for-life one in some dark enclosure, Opto 22 is the place to come. 

This new video is a fun look back on how we got here. Please join us in celebrating 50 years of our company and product philosophy. We're glad you're along for the ride.

In 1974, Robert Engman III stared down at 22 optically isolated, highly reliable, liquid epoxy-filled, solid state relays (SSRs) with no moving parts—quite an innovation back then—and he contemplated what to name the new company.

The result? "Opto" signifies optical isolation, and the "22" represents the original lineup of 22 relays. But this year, there’s another important number that we need to discuss—50!

Yes, Opto 22 is 50. Years. Young. 

This week, as we celebrate Opto’s Golden Anniversary of existence, I’d be remiss not to reflect on the legacy of a company I have loved being a part of for the last decade. And while my 11 years may seem like a long time, many of the folks I work with each day have tenures twice or thrice as long—they’ve been carrying the torch, maintaining the legacy that we are still building today.

Need a generation-to-generation upgrade path? Opto 22 customers have it.

With all the buzz of Opto 22's 50-year anniversary in the air, many of us here at Opto 22 headquarters in Temecula, California, are sharing our Opto stories—mostly centered around memories of people and events. It wasn't until a live-chat message came in from a customer asking about migrating PID loops from a legacy Factory Floor application to PAC Control running on a groov EPIC that this blog post crystallized in my mind's eye.

What struck me even more than the question about migrating those mid-1990s PID loops is just how profound it is that the question actually does have an answer! (Stay tuned until the end.)

You can count on high-quality Opto products and continued support for all your automation and IIoT applications.

I have a hard time believing it’s been 50 years since my dad and mom started Opto 22. My dad, Bob Engman, was an engineer who helped develop a better way to manufacture solid state relays. 

SSRs had just been invented in the early 1970s, and the improvement was to pot SSRs with epoxy to protect the electronics from shock, vibration, and environmental contaminants. When Opto 22 began in 1974, our first products were, you guessed it, twenty-two SSR models manufactured by the new method.