About Us · Our History
The Berkeley Nucleonics Story
Sixty years of precision instrumentation, from a single custom pulse generator to one of the most diverse signal-source companies in the industry.
Sixty years of precision instrumentation, from a single custom pulse generator to one of the most diverse signal-source companies in the industry.
Berkeley Nucleonics builds precision electronic instrumentation for the people who cannot afford to guess. Test and measurement, radiation detection, nuclear research, RF and microwave: the catalog runs from signal generators and spectrum analyzers to pulse generators, arbitrary waveform generators, and isotope identifiers, one of the widest ranges of signal generation and analysis tools you can get from a single manufacturer. The company is headquartered in San Rafael, California, with additional U.S. facilities and a representative network that reaches more than 60 countries. Our application engineers pick up the phone, and if you want to put a unit on your own bench before you commit, we will set up a demo.
It started with custom pulse generators. Berkeley Nucleonics built them to tighter tolerances than the market expected, and a reputation for precision, stability, and plain reliability followed. The Model 625A, our first ARB and function generator, was named Test and Measurement Product of the Year by the Cahners Electronics Group. That obsession with waveform fidelity never left. It still shows up in today’s arbitrary waveform generators, which lead the field in modulation bandwidth and memory depth.
Few companies have shaped digital delay generation the way we have. Berkeley Nucleonics has introduced fifteen distinct digital delay generators, with timing resolution down to 250 femtoseconds, and independent media surveys keep ranking us in the top tier of DDG producers year after year. The same engineering runs through our light pulse generators and RF signal generators, all built to one rule: get smaller and faster without giving up performance.
In the mid-1990s we stood up the Nuclear Products Group to take on radiation detection and analysis. In 1997 it delivered the SAM 935, the first real-time system that could identify and quantify several radionuclides at once. Those instruments now work in environmental monitoring, health physics, emergency response, and power generation.
We back the hardware with training. Berkeley Nucleonics runs an accredited program of seminars in radiation detection and measurement, in person across the country and online, and by 2020 our teams had trained personnel at more than 165 private, state, and federal sites. We co-sponsored a radiological detection course with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, support field exercises like The Continuing Challenge and the Bay Guardian, and keep regular company with CAL OES, the DOE national labs, and law enforcement. Our own engineers and spectroscopists run those sessions, and customers tell us they can feel the difference.
When research budgets tightened in 2008, we did not retreat to the high end. We answered with research-grade instruments priced under $2,000: a power supply, an oscilloscope, an arbitrary waveform generator, a universal frequency counter, and two spectrum analyzers, with the features a bench engineer actually needs and none of the cost that does not earn its keep. That value line keeps growing, most recently with portable touchscreen oscilloscopes and a budget digital delay generator driven from a virtual front panel.
Berkeley Nucleonics builds standard, specialized, and fully custom scintillation detectors for the most demanding radiation counting work. For close to two decades we have designed them shoulder to shoulder with customers, on site, for nuclear, health physics, and applications that never fit neatly in a catalog. For engineers new to the field, the Academy covers the fundamentals of scintillator technology, and our on-demand webinars go deeper.
After the 2011 accident, Berkeley Nucleonics sent products, trainers, and technicians to Japan to build radiation-screening processes alongside our local partners, and donated equipment directly to end users and humanitarian groups on the ground. Organizations and agencies in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan recognized the contribution. Our partners translated the documentation and safety training into Japanese so that non-technical responders could pick up a detector and use it with confidence.
Also in 2011 we launched BNC Scientific to bring customers the best instruments we do not build ourselves. It represents market-leading manufacturers in microwave signal generation, large distributed timing systems, advanced spectrum analyzers, and ultra-high-frequency arbitrary waveform generators. In 2012 we paired those lines with our own production to deliver turn-key answers to hard signal-generation and analysis problems. Same Northern California headquarters, same insistence on reliability, high performance, and fair pricing.
In 2018 we opened the Berkeley Nucleonics Academy, an online school for students and technical staff who are new to the field and want to understand the theory, the terminology, and the applications behind the instruments. The courses are free to every college student. When the pandemic hit in 2020 we pushed the Academy harder, adding nuclear safety, RF and microwave, and materials science, plus a webinar series, roughly an hour each, available on demand.
In 2021 Berkeley Nucleonics acquired the high-voltage and high-current pulse generator lines of Directed Energy, Inc., pushing our output range out to 10,000 volts and adding very high current laser diode drivers that reach up to 450 amps with industry-leading rise times. You can get that capability as an open board, a small OEM module, or a traditional benchtop instrument. The acquisition made Berkeley Nucleonics one of the most diverse signal-source companies in the world.
Six decades in, we still measure ourselves the same two ways: technical excellence, and how fast we respond to what customers need next. We take on the tough applications, the ones the competition tends to pass on, and we back them with aggressive R&D and support channels we keep strengthening. As always, give us a call and we will talk through the right technology for the job. Berkeley Nucleonics is a proud member of the Government-Industry Data Exchange Program, which works to improve the quality, cost, and authenticity of electronic components.
