Mr. Schramm: The company was formed in 1965 and went public in 1983. Maxwell has three product groups, two that are mature and one, as I call it, our adolescent. The oldest is our high-tension capacitors. We build them all out of our Swiss facility, and that was part of an acquisition the company made in 2002. These are up to 500,000 volt capacitors that are used for the electric utility grid. It is a very stable business and relatively predictable. Our second mature product group is microelectronics, where we build computers and other electronic components for satellites and spacecraft applications. These are radiation-hardened devices, very unique, very nifty, and they are built to withstand the effects of environmental radiation as satellites are exposed to solar flares and black holes. So it's really a high-end technology, all based in San Diego.
Obviously, the product group I think your readers want to know more about is ultracapacitors, which are based on a rather new technology that you don't read about a whole lot in engineering textbooks. Ultracapacitors have the ability to store a lot of power, very, very quickly. I've used the term it's like lightning in a bottle that you store very, very quickly, and you can unleash it very, very quickly. Ultracapacitors work at temperature ranges that most other energy devices can't work at, and it's very cyclable. That means you can charge and discharge them a million of times and they keep on working. So those are the three product groups.
And the company is global. Our headquarters and microelectronics and ultracapacitor technology groups are in San Diego. Our high voltage manufacturing operations are in Rossens, Switzerland, and we have ultracapacitor sales offices in Munich and another sales office in Shanghai. Our ultracapacitor products are assembled by contract manufacturing partners in China.
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