As we approach the 40^th anniversary of the first Topical Meeting on Optical Interference Coatings (OIC), it is instructive to review the history of this important conference as it directly reflects the advancement made in optical interference coatings over the past 40 years. Between the 1950s and the mid-1970s, significant progress had been made in many areas of optical coatings: theory, computer-aided design, optical monitoring, deposition techniques, physical and optical characterization techniques.  With these advances, interference coatings became an essential part of many optical systems and the thin film coating industry began to form across North America, Europe and elsewhere.  However, while thin film activities were a strong component in the Optical Society of America (OSA) annual meetings, there was no conference dedicated to optical interference coatings.
 
In 1976, Philip Baumeister took the initiative and organized the very first topical meeting on optical interference coatings in Pacific Grove, California, USA.  The driving principle was to have a conference where people working in thin film research and the optical coating industry could come together and share their most important findings every four years (later changed to three years). To date, twelve OIC conferences have been held and OIC has become one of the longest running topical meeting series of OSA (with support from other societies).   Over the years, many pioneers and leading experts from countries all over the world in the optical coating field have become General or Program chairs of the OIC conferences (see the table below) or members of the program or advisory committees. Their contribution has helped greatly in promoting this international conference and in ensuring its continuity and growing success.
 

Past Topical Meetings on Optical Interference Coatings
No.	General Chair	Program Chair	Date	Location
1	Philip Baumeister, USA	V. R. Costich, USA	Feb. 24–26, 1976	Pacific Grove, USA
2	J.A. (George) Dobrowolski, Canada		June 3–5, 1980	Oakland, USA
3	J.A. (George) Dobrowolski, Canada	Alfred J. Thelen, Germany	April 17–19, 1984	Monterey, USA
4	Alfred J. Thelen, Germany	H. Angus Macleod, USA	April 12–15, 1988	Tucson, USA
5	H. Angus Macleod, USA	Charles Carniglia, USA	June 1–5, 1992	Tucson, USA
6	Philip Baumeister, USA; Douglas Smith, USA		June 4–9, 1995	Tucson, USA
7	Charles Carniglia, USA	Brian Sullivan, Canada	June 7–12, 1998	Tucson, USA
8	Brian Sullivan, Canada	Ric Shimshock, USA	July 15–20, 2001	Banff, Canada
9	Ric Shimshock, USA	Norbert Kaiser, Germany	June 27–July 2, 2004	Tucson, USA
10	Norbert Kaiser, Germany	Chris Stolz, USA	June 3 – 8, 2007	Tucson, USA
11	Chris Stolz, USA	Markus Tilsch, USA	June 6 – 11, 2010	Tucson, USA
12	Markus Tilsch, USA	Detlev Ristau, Germany	June 16 – 21, 2013	Whistler, Canada

45 people attended the first OIC conference and presented 31 papers during the three-day meeting.   Since then, the OIC conference has grown considerably and it now regularly attracts over 300 people from all over the world for five days of technical sessions, one day of short courses, a technical exhibit and three optical coating related contests in design, manufacturing and measurement.  With over 180 contributed and invited papers, the OIC conference serves as a focal point for global technical interchange in the field of optical interference coatings.   All aspects of optical coatings are covered including design, deposition technologies, process control, measurement, testing, characterization and, mostly importantly, the broad and ever growing range of applications for optical coatings covering wavelengths from the soft X-ray to the far infrared spectral regions.  To ensure that the advances in optical coatings highlighted during the OIC conference are widely disseminated, a feature issue of the Applied Optics journal is dedicated to the OIC conference.
 
We look forward to the next (2016) OIC conference to be held in Tucson, Arizona and continuing the tradition of bringing the optical field community together from all over the world to share the latest results and advances in the field of optical coatings.