The story
Digital Surf was established in 1989 in Besançon, France, initially as manufacturer of 3D non-contact laser profilometers.
In 1990, the company launched its first profile (2D surface texture) analysis software, for the MS-DOS operating system, followed in 1991 by a topography (3D surface texture analysis) software for the Macintosh II platform.
In 1992, Digital Surf had a first OEM deal with the company Taylor-Hobson. The software has since been offered by Taylor Hobson under the names TalyMap (topography) and TalyProfile (profile analysis).
In 1997, Digital Surf moved all its software to Windows and launched a new product for Windows 95 under the name Mountains. Other profilometer manufacturers started to promote it, such as Hommel-Etamic (Jenoptik Group) or KLA-Tencor.
In 2009, Digital Surf stopped manufacturing profilometers to refocus on the sole Mountains analysis software.
in 2011, Mountains was supplied as the standard or optional OEM surface analysis software by about 30 manufacturers, including Taylor-Hobson, Jenoptik, KLA-Tencor, Keysight, Leica, Mitaka Kohki, Nikon, or Zeiss.
Digital Surf has contributed to the ISO 25178 standard that defines new 3D surface texture parameters.
in 2014 Digital Surf took over the Danish company Image Metrology, the developer of the software SPIP, specialized in the image analysis for atomic force microscopes. As a result, the version 8 of Mountains includes SPIP.
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in 2018 Digital Surf claims that its Mountains software is used by 15,000 users and integrated by more than 50 instrument manufacturers worldwide, including Bruker, Hitachi, Thermo Fisher Scientific, JEOL, Anton Paar, Nanosystem, Confovis.
From Wikipedia’s article on Digital Surf, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4