We are sad to report that our colleague Alain Buisson has died.
Extremely passionate about his work and with an uncommon flair for innovation, he regularly created new optical concepts for magical effects based on simple solutions.
Alain spent most of his career in vehicle lighting and was a real wizard in signal lighting. In 1973 he started his career at Seima, a French company which later became part of Valeo. In 1983 he then joined Axo Scintex which is known today as Automotive Lighting Rear Lamps France. In that period, he was a mechanical and optical engineer involved in the development of rear lamps and small lighting applications for Peugeot, Citroën, and Renault. In 1986, Alain moved to DBM in Canada, working in the field of reflex optical engineering. At DBM he developed a new 3D reflex reflector for automotive applications, targeting especially US carmakers.
During this period, he developed a special passion for small optics and micro optics, which were later applied in many of his designs and inventions. In 1989, Alain came back to France, being successively R&D Director, and then Innovation Manager of Automotive Lighting France. He developed multiple innovative signaling products for European and Japanese car makers and was one of the very first to apply LED light sources in rear lamps.A few bright innovative concepts developed by Alain:
Over his career, Alain was the originator of many clever concepts resulting in almost 40 patents in the field of signaling applications. Here’s a small selection:
First LED rear lamp for PSA
Painted bezel with holes concept
Optical collimator
– One of the first rearlamp with mirror effect
– Very compact design based on complex light guide
– Scale effect from metallized inner lens
– Compact Stop / Tail / TI / Reverse
And more wonderful ideas to come in 2021…!
We are grateful to Alain for his sparkling contributions to the lighting community, and sad he’s gone.