Cary Instruments was founded in 1946 [1] by Howard Cary, George W. Downs and William C. Miller under the name Applied Physics Corporation. The company became well known as a supplier of high-quality optical instrumentation for scientific laboratories. The company was purchased in 1966 by Varian Medical Systems, at which time it became known as the Cary Instruments division of Varian. Varian still markets a line of optical instrumentation under the Cary brand[2].
One of the more famous instruments produced in the early days was the Cary-60 CD spectropolarimeter[3], used to measure circular dichroism. Some of these 40 year old instruments are still in daily use in 2005, due to their heavy-duty construction, excellent optics, and lack of any modern replacement.
Varian was not "Varian Medical Systems at the time of the acquisition of Cary Instruments. Varian was "Varian Associates" at that time. Varian Medical Systems was created when Varian Associates split into three companies, Varian Medical Systems,Varian Semiconductor, and Varian, Inc, which retained the Cary products, in 1999.