Acknowledgements

Although this textbook addresses how to create vacuum, an important acknowledgement is that writing and publishing a textbook does NOT occur in a vacuum! Producing a textbook requires access to many resources. It especially takes many people with a variety of talents committed to making it come together in a final product. We would like to express our appreciation and thanks to all who provided the resources and played a part in publishing this textbook.

We are very grateful for the support received from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the new-to-ATE grant project award DUE # 2000454. The NSF’s support makes it possible to undertake projects like this one that can generate valuable resources to improve technician education.

We thank author David Hata who owns the copyright for the original print Introduction to Vacuum Technology textbook for granting permission to use his materials in this e-book version of the textbook.

We thank Allison Brown from the Digital Publishing Services Office at SUNY Geneseo for help in navigating the Milne Open Textbooks publishing platform. Allison’s on-going support was essential to make use of this platform’s editing, graphics, and other on-line book production features.

We also thank all the individuals who helped secure permissions to use figures, videos and animations from their company publications: J.R. Gaines from Kurt J. Lesker Company, Jake Young from Busch Vacuum Solutions, and Brian Hillegass from Leybold USA Inc. Special thanks to Gigi Bocek for creating and updating numerous graphics and animations for this e-book.

And many thanks to all the individuals who reviewed the book and provided feedback. These individuals represent faculty, students, technicians, and other practitioners whose invaluable perspectives helped to make the content addressed in this book much more relevant.