Where will
our curiosity
lead us next?

As the world emerges from its global crisis in the middle of the 1940s, Gerhard Steck becomes aware of bottlenecks in the supply of X-ray tubes for medical applications and founds Comet in 1948.

In the early 1950s, under his son’s leadership, the young company acquires an in-house production license from its American partner Machlett Ltd, enabling top-of-the-line products to be manufactured in Switzerland. This leads to the creation of Comet’s first product development laboratory in 1956. 

The company, in the mid-1960s, dives into the production of vacuum capacitors for short wave radio transmitters. This marks the first step toward the semiconductor market, first in Japan, then in the Silicon Valley, and later in Korea. 

Comet helps make history in the early 1970s by developing special x-ray tubes used in the world’s first computed tomography scanners, a technology invented by Godfrey Hounsfield, winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. 

X-ray tubes fly to the moon in the early 1980s with the D1 mission, marking their first use in space.

Comet goes public in the mid-1990s, opening up new possibilities for its evolution. Responding to this fast growth, Comet builds its new headquarters in Flamatt.

The group accelerates once more at the beginning of the new millennium, making a first step toward the end-user business, through the acquisition of FeinFocus, pioneer of microfocus X-ray inspection systems.  This is followed in 2007 by the purchase and integration of YXLON International, one of the world’s leading x-ray system manufacturers. At a single stroke, Comet doubles its size.

The acquisition of the German-based Stolberg HF-Technik, creates the basis for Comet to develop complete RF power supply systems. 
The semiconductor market promises opportunities and the company therefore focuses in exclusively developing it's traditional 2 core technologies: Plasma Control and X-ray.

Digitalization is advancing. Terms such as big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence are finding their way into the lives of more and more people. That’s why in 2020, Comet acquires the Canadian software developer ORS. Software-driven insights in production will help customers become more productive and conserve resources.

To better meet the rapidly growing demand for Comet products in Asia, the company expands its operations in the region.