Terahertz, waiting "for the paint to dry"-while we wait some thoughts on the market, and important comments by Dr. Irl Duling

Watching the emergence of a new technology can be painful to those of us, who have  "stepped-up to the plate," to participate in the new technologies move from laboratory to factory floor.  I have found this to be true about my investment in THz. What is particularly frustrating is to see those on the "inside" of companies, sell their shares on the open market, only to then reward themselves with stock options.
Talk about short-sighted, and  being naive about how the market works, and how it perceives such self-serving practices. This is of course, my personal opinion, but it's shared widely in the investment community. My bottom-line is that the technological innovations that THz has, and will generate,  will more than make up for this naivite, in the long-run. Let's hope I'm right.

(Too bad, the private investor can't currently invest in companies, like TeraView, which does a remarkable job getting it's name out into the world or  in  a  revolutionary start-up like Bridge12.)

Enough, of the sermon, let's talk about THz. I had asked Dr. Irl Duling at Picometrix/ Advanced Photonix, if there were any synergies or direct connections between API's state of the art, 100 GPS, High Speed Optical Receivers (HSOR),  which employs a dual speed modulation system, DP-QPSK, and their current THz systems.
Here is his response:
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The first products of Picometrix (now API) were in high speed opto-electronics (basically the interaction of light with electronics).  What first came out of that effort was a line of optical detectors (these were generally used to look at high speed light signals in a laboratory setting).  As telecom took off in the late 90’s, this product was transformed and hardened (to pass Telcordia qualification) for the telecom industry.  Also in the late 90’s, Picometrix transferred technology related to THz generation and detection from AT&T Bell Laboratories (about the time they formed Lucent).  One of the synergies with THz was the fact that the techniques developed for fabricating reliable high speed optical receivers (HSOR) for telecom could be used to fabricate highly reliable transmitters and receivers for THz applications, and that the ability to fiber couple THz sensors was an “enabling technology” for the movement of THz into real world applications (which of course we have patented in both the US and the EU).
So as of now, although they sell to distinctly different markets, the HSOR components and the THz transmitters and receivers share the same semiconductor growth facility (MBE machine) and the same micro-fabrication clean room, and use many of the same techniques for manufacture.
Company-wise, the strong government revenue from THz (contracts and sales, DOD and NASA) has been stabilizing over the ups and downs of the telecom market (like the crash in 2002-6), which enabled API to be well positioned when the inevitable market recovery occurred.
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Thank you, Dr. Duling for sharing this information with us. Here's hoping for a press release or explanation of the new T-Ray 5000, system which  most of you have only heard about here. Terahertz is going to change the face of the industrial world, let's just hope those changes materialize, at long last, sooner rather than later.

For more on HSOR modulation systems:http://www.jdsu.com/ProductLiterature/optical_modulation_methods.pdf