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The story
Hirox founded in Tokyo, Japan in 1978 as a lens and optical system manufacturer. In 1980 the company started to design and sell TV lenses for people with poor eyesight, and to supply products to the Swedish government. It introduced the first digital microscope in 1985, followed by a hand-held video microscope system in 1986, supplied to the Japanese police force. The Hirox Digital Microscope System started distribution in the USA in 1986. The 3-D rotational microscope was introduced in 1992. From 2000 offices and associated companies were set up in Osaka, USA, China, Nagoya, Korea, Europe, and Asia, with distribution agreements with LECO (USA), Leeds Precision Instruments, and Olympus Corporation.
By 2014 distribution agreements with LECO (USA), Leeds Precision Instruments, and Olympus Corporation had ended.
In 2018, a distribution agreement started with Nikon Metrology.
One of the first major demonstrations of the Hirox technology was the high-resolution digitalization of Girl with a Pearl Earring starting in 2018, resulting in a panoramic image of over 1 billion pixels, believed to be first such panoramic image of this size.
From Wikipedia’s article on Hirox, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4