But Dr. Kapany was growing restless in academia, and in 1960 he moved his family to California to start a new company, Optics Technology, to commercialize his research. He based it in Palo Alto, then just emerging as a tech hub, and received funding from Draper, Gaither & Anderson, one of the first venture-capital firms on the West Coast.As president and chief of research at the company, Dr. Kapany was focused on product development; to run the business side, the board hired Thomas J. Perkins, a young business executive who would go on to become a Silicon Valley eminence as co-founder …
