TRW Inc.: История американской корпорации

American industrial company
the former company

TRW Inc., was an American corporation involved in a variety of businesses, mainly aerospace, electronics, automotive, and credit reporting. It was a pioneer in multiple fields including electronic components, integrated circuits, computers, software and systems engineering. TRW built many spacecraft, including Pioneer 1, Pioneer 10, and several space based observatories. It was #57 on the 1986 Fortune 500 list, and had 122,258 employees. In 1953, the company was recruited to lead the development of the United States' first ICBM. Starting with the initial design by Convair, the multi corporate team launched Atlas in 1957. It flew its full range in 1958 and was then adapted to fly the Mercury astronauts into orbit. but TRW never produced any missile hardware because of the conflict of interest. In 1960, Congress spurred the formation of the non profit Aerospace Corporation to provide systems engineering support to the U. S. government Their initial products were bolts with heads electrically welded to the shafts. In 1904, a welder named Charles E. Thompson adapted their process to making automobile engine valves Charles Thompson was named general manager of the company, which became Thompson Products in 1926. Their experimental hollow sodium cooled valves aided Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic. They also produced scientific spacecraft such as Pioneer 1. Thompson Products and Ramo Wooldridge merged in October 1958 to form Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc., unofficially known as "TRW". TRW acquired LucasVarity in 1999, then selling Lucas Diesel Systems to Delphi Automotive and Lucas Aerospace (then called TRW Aeronautical Systems) to Goodrich Corporation. The company was 57th The damage was estimated to be greater than US$10 million and was the most serious fire to date in the area. In February 2002, Northrop Grumman launched a US$5.9 billion hostile bid for TRW. Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, and General Dynamics contended for the company with Northrop's increased bid of US$7.8 billion ultimately being accepted on July 1, 2002. Soon afterward, the automotive assets of LucasVarity and TRW's own automotive group were sold to The Blackstone Group as TRW Automotive. A portion of TRW's Lyndhurst campus was developed as Legacy Village. The headquarters building became home to the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute. Demolition of the TRW headquarters building began in October of 2023 and is currently underway. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, says that he got "his first big break" at age fifteen, debugging energy grid control software for TRW. "It was kind of scary", Gates said, realizing the things the program was going to help operate. "This thing needs to work".

TRW Inc. was active in the development of missile systems and spacecraft, notably, the early development of the U. S. ICBM program under the leadership of the Teapot Committee led by John von Neumann. TRW pioneered systems engineering, creating the ubiquitous N2 chart and the modern functional flow block diagram. It served as the primary source of systems engineering for the United States Air Force ballistic missile programs.

Space Technology Laboratories (STL), then a division of Ramo Wooldridge Corp., designed and produced the identical payloads for Pioneer 0, Pioneer 1 and Pioneer 2. These were intended to orbit and photograph the Moon, but launch vehicle problems prevented this. NASA launched Pioneer 1 as its first spacecraft on 11 October 1958. It set a distance record from Earth, and provided data on the extent of Earth's radiation belts. Pioneer 10 and 11 were nearly identical spacecraft, designed and fabricated by TRW Systems Group. They were optimized for ruggedness since they were the first man made objects to pass through the asteroid belt and Jupiter's radiation belt. Simplicity, redundancy, and use of proven components were essential. As NASA's first all atomic powered spacecraft, these used plutonium 238 units developed by Teledyne Isotopes. Pioneer 10 carried eleven instruments and Pioneer 11 carried twelve for investigating Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. Data was transmitted back to Earth at 8 watts, 128 bytes/s at Jupiter, and 1 byte/s from further out. Pioneer 10 was the first man made object to pass the planetary orbits and its last telemetry was received in 2002, thirty years after launch. TRW Systems Group designed and built the instrument package which performed the Martian biological experiments, searching for life aboard the two Viking Landers launched in 1975. The system performed four experiments on Martian soil using a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer (GC MS) and a combined biological instrument.

TRW Systems Group designed and manufactured the Vela series of nuclear detection satellites which monitored the 1963 establishment of the nuclear Partial Test Ban Treaty. Subsequently, they produced the Advanced Vela series, first launched in 1967, which could detect nuclear air bursts using instruments actually called bhangmeters. It had the first dual spin attitude control system with the total system momentum controlled to zero. The Vela and Advanced Vela satellites were the first to alert astronomers to the presence of gamma ray bursts. They also reported a mysterious apparent nuclear test now called the Vela incident. First launched in 1970, the company built all twenty three reconnaissance satellites in the Defense Support Program (DSP), which are the principal components of the Satellite Early Warning System currently used by the United States. These are operated by the Air Force Space Command, and they detect missile or spacecraft launches and nuclear explosions using sensors that detect the infrared emissions from these intense sources of heat. During Desert Storm, for example, DSP satellites were able to detect the launches of Iraqi Scud missiles and provide timely warnings to civilians and military forces in Israel and Saudi Arabia. The initial seven Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) were built by TRW to improve communication coverage for the Space Shuttle, International Space Station (ISS), and U. S. military satellites. When first launched in 1983, the TDRS satellites were the largest, most sophisticated communications satellites built at the time. The seventh vehicle in the series was ordered as a replacement when TDRS B was lost in the Challenger accident. Launched in 2002, TRW produced the Aqua spacecraft based on their modular standardized satellite bus. A joint project of the U. S. Global Change Research Program (NASA), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Brazil, Aqua delivers 750 Gigabytes per day detailing the Earth's water cycle in the oceans, lakes, atmosphere, polar ice caps, and vegetation.

TRW designed and built the descent engine or (LMDE) for the Apollo lunar lander. Due to the need for a soft landing on the Moon, it was the first throttleable engine for crewed space flight. This, and the requirements for high thrust, low weight, and crushability (in case of landing on a large rock), This engine was used on Apollo 13 to achieve free return trajectory and make a minor course correction after damage to the Service Module. After the Apollo program Moon landings, the LMDE was further developed into the TRW TR 201 engine. This engine was used in the second stage Delta P of the Delta launch vehicle for 77 launches between 1972–1988.

At the turn of 1964 65, the United States started the ambitious Bushmaster program to create small caliber assault guns for arming promising infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) of the American Army. The result of this program was the creation of a whole series of automatic cannons with an external automatic drive in caliber from 25 to 40 mm, which received their own general name Bushmaster. At the early stage of American research, TRW was one of the companies involved in the development of automatic guns of the Bushmaster program, where, under the leadership of engineer Eugene Stoner, the author of the famous M16 rifle, a 25 mm automatic cannon was developed under the internal designation TRW model 6425, an ordinary system with automatic gas venting and locking the barrel with a rotary bolt is enough. The TRW 6425 design was later bought from Oerlikon Bührle, it was improved and manufactured as the Oerlikon KBA 25 mm.

The Ramo Wooldridge Corp formed Pacific Semiconductors in June 1954, under the leadership of Harper North who had been head of electronics R+D at Hughes Aircraft Company. The funding for this endeavor from Thompson Products was about ten times their initial investment in Ramo Wooldridge. This device reduced the physical size of radio tuners and eliminated the need for moving mechanical parts. This simplified the implementation of remote control TV tuners. Sachar and Barnes were awarded an Emmy in 2007. The company manufactured the RW 300 for sales in 1959, one of the first "all transistor" computers The real time operating system was written by John Neblett, and was the intellectual precursor of the RSX 11 operating system for the PDP 11. The TRW 130 computer was introduced in 1961, and designated the AN/UYK 1 by the U. S. Navy as part of its pre GPS TRANSIT (NAVSAT) satellite based location system. It used Doppler shifts to compute a location in about 15 minutes, and had rounded corners to allow installation in submarines. The Transistor Transistor Logic (TTL) logic gate, which was the electronics industry standard for two decades, was invented by TRW's James L. Buie in 1961. In 1965, engineers Don Nelson and Dick Pick at TRW developed the Generalized Information Retrieval Language and System, for use by the U. S. Army to control the inventory of Cheyenne helicopter parts. This developed into the Pick Database Management System which is still in use as of 2016. TRW LSI Products, Inc. was a wholly owned subsidiary formed to commercialize the integrated circuit technology the company had developed in support of its aerospace business. They produced some of the first commercially available digital signal processing ICs including the TDC1008 multiplier accumulator. They also made the first 8 bit flash ADC IC, the TDC1007, resulting in an Emmy Award for analog/digital video conversion technology. TRW also pioneered gallium arsenide (GaAs) chip applications for local multipoint distribution service (LMDS) systems, radios, and satellite communications.

Bel Canto Stereophonic Recordings, a TRW subsidiary, was a record label active from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s.

Christopher John Boyce was a TRW employee convicted of selling security secrets to the Soviet Union via the Soviet embassy in Mexico City in the mid 1970s. Boyce and his accomplice, Andrew Daulton Lee, were the subjects of the best selling 1979 Robert Lindsey book The Falcon and the Snowman, and the 1985 film of the same title. Representatives from Space Technology Laboratories (STL) present their ICBM expertise to Don and Pete in Mad Men season 2 episode "The Jet Set". The Star Trek: The Original Series season 1 episode "Operation Annihilate!" (13 April 1967) was filmed on the then TRW campus (now Northrop Grumman's Space Park) in Redondo Beach, California. The two sets of stairs shown are those leading to the cafeteria of Building S. William Shatner had previously filmed at the TRW campus for the Outer Limits episode "Cold Hands, Warm Heart". In the episode, he plays an astronaut for "Project Vulcan". The 1967 sci fi film Countdown, also filmed at the TRW Space Park. The TRW building is supposedly one of the credit company buildings demolished in the 1999 film Fight Club. This is because at the time the book was written, TRW was in the business of credit reporting. However, there is no TRW building in Delaware, where the demolition purportedly happens. TRW equipment/boxes can be seen stored and being unloaded in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind during scenes filmed at Devils Tower.

In the 1960s and 1970s, TRW stored trichloroethylene (TCE), a critical chemical for cooling and degreasing computer chips, in tanks deep underground in Sunnyvale, California for later use. TCE is also found in household cleaners. As a result of pipe and tank degradation, the tanks leaked into the ground, resulting in contaminated soil and groundwater. TCE was later determined to be toxic to humans at high concentrations. In 2013, The Atlantic referred to the site as a "paved over environmental disaster zone". In the 1980s, the US introduced the federal Superfund program to clean up the country's toxic waste sites. The site TRW (now Northrop Grumman) is responsible for is called the 'TRW Microwave site'. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) worked with TRW to treat the water with ultraviolet light and oxygenation and excavate the contaminated soil. In 1994, a public health study determined that the groundwater was still unacceptably contaminated, which can cause vapor intrusion. The EPA says the site has institutional controls to protect people from contact with affected water. Drinking water in the area comes from Hetch Hetchy and municipal wells. In the 2000s, a bioremediation method developed by Stanford University using bacteria in molasses to naturally breakdown the TCE into harmless sub compounds was implemented. Other measures included engineering vapor pathways to avoid direct human contact by releasing it into the air. Jared Blumenfeld, the former EPA director, said that TCE released in the air after the cleanup efforts reduces the concentrations to levels that eliminate health risks. Blumenfeld said that airborne TCE is not ideal, but the cleanup has reduced the toxins by 90% as of 2013, according to Max Shahbacian, the project's lead at California State Water Resources Control Board before it was transferred to the EPA, and geologist Michael Calhoun. In 2014 and 2015, a newly required vapor intrusion test of the surrounding residential area, including homes, apartment buildings, and four schools, showed unacceptable levels of TCE. A 2011 study had revealed TCE caused birth defects and cancer by all pathways of exposure. In 2014, the region's congressional representative Anna Eshoo expressed concerns that the EPA had not been properly monitoring the site and notififying residents of a possible health issue. The EPA litigated with the responsible parties in order update its notification and testing measures to warn residents about possible exposure as early as possible and keeping people away from any unsafe areas. as of 2016, the site is owned by GI Partners, an investment company, and has been leased by Apple Inc. since 2015 for research and development as of 2021. The octagonal glass building In 2016, the Donald Trump administration cut funding the Superfund program by $330 million and EPA funding by more than 30%, resulting in a significant reduction in enforcement and testing. During his presidency, the EPA increased its use of consent decrees, or administrative settlements, to ensure progress continued under the budget cuts, forcing responsible parties to pay for the cleanup. Scott Pruitt, Trump's head of the EPA threatened to cut budgets again for the enforcement. In 2019, the EPA and Philips Semiconductors agreed to a consent decree, with Northrop Grumman as a signatory, to fund the remaining cleanup and monitoring of the site, along with two nearby sites collectively known as the "Triple Site". In March 2021, Ashley Gjøvik, a former Apple program manager, publicized concerns that the site had not been properly tested since 2015 after receiving an email from Apple notifying employees of forthcoming vapor intrusion testing. An EPA study in 2019 had confirmed the previous remedies effective, but Gjøvik told TechCrunch cracks in the floor were exposing employees to carcinogenic fumes.