RAYTHEON

Raytheon Company is a major American defense contractor and industrial corporation with core manufacturing concentrations in defense systems and defense and commercial electronics and its is the world's largest producer of missiles.Laurence K. Marshall and Vannevar Bush, along with scientist Charles G. Smith, founded Raytheon Company in Cambridge, Mass., as the American Appliance Company in 1922.In 1925, they produced an electron tube for radios, known technically as a gaseous rectifier and marketed under the brand name Raytheon.This was used in a battery eliminator, a type of radio-receiver power supply that plugged into the power grid in place of large batteries. This made it possible to convert household alternating current to direct current for radios and thus eliminate the need for expensive, short-lived batteries and made radios affordable and accessible to every household.In 1925 the company changed its name to Raytheon Manufacturing Company and began marketing its rectifier, under the Raytheon brand name, with great commercial success.The word "Ray" comes from "rai," an Old French word that means "a beam of light," while "theon" comes from the Greek and means "from the gods. In 1928 Raytheon merged with Q.R.S. Company, an American manufacturer of electron tubes and switches, to form the successor of the same previous name, Raytheon Manufacturing Company. In 1933 it diversified by acquiring Acme-Delta Company, a producer of transformers, power equipment, and electronic auto parts.During world war II era, the company began producing magnetron tubes for use in radar sets with the technological support from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Radiation Laboratory .During this time Raytheon also started producing ground and shipboard radar systems which were extensively used in world war II by Britain and the Allied Forces.Raytheon's Fritz Gross, a talented young engineers, developed the microwave SG radar, a shipboard radar that was far superior to the radars carried in planes because the German submarines could not tune in on their frequencies as they could with aircraft radar. In 1947, Raytheon demonstrated the world's first microwave oven and called it a "Radarange," the winning name in an employee contest. In 1948, Raytheon released the first commercially produced transistor, the CK703 point contact transistor. This was followed by the CK722 germanium junction transistor, the first transistor sold to the public. In 1954, the Texas Instruments/Regency Electronics partnership released the first commercially produced transistor radio, the Regency TR-1. Raytheon responded the next year with its own version of the transistor radio, the 8TP-4.In 1948, Raytheon became the first company to develop a missile guidance system that could hit a flying target. Based on Raytheon's success in missile seekers, the Navy awarded Raytheon a contract for the Sparrow air- to-air missile and the Army awarded Raytheon a contract for the Hawk ground-to-air missile. These missile systems are now deployed by the U.S. and dozens of Allied nations around the world.In 1965 it acquired Amana Refrigeration, Inc., a manufacturer of refrigerators and air conditioners. In 1967, Raytheon was awarded a contract for the U.S. Army's Surface-to-Air Missile Development (SAM- D), a missile designed to provide defense against high-performance aircraft.For Apollo 11, Raytheon builds the computer that guides the space vehicles in their journey, and its on-board microwave tube transmits radio and TV signals to earth, enabling millions to witness history live. In development for nine years, the SAM-D entered full-scale production in 1976, at which time it was renamed the "Patriot" in honor of the U.S bicentennial celebration. In 1986, the Patriot Advanced Capability Phase 1 (PAC-1) missile, upgraded with anti-tactical missile capabilities, intercepted and destroyed a Lance missile in flight, successfully proving itself against short-range ballistic missiles.In 1980, Raytheon acquired Beech Aircraft Corporation, a leading manufacturer of general aviation aircraft founded in 1932 by Walter H. Beech. In the Persian Gulf War, Raytheon's Patriot Missile intercepts Iraqi Scuds fired at Israel and Saudi Arabia, becoming the first missile ever to engage a hostile ballistic missile in combat.In 1993 the company expanded its aircraft activities by adding the Hawker line of business jets by acquiring Corporate Jets Inc., the business jet product line of British Aerospace.These two entities were merged in 1994 to become the Raytheon Aircraft Company.
Raytheon is composed of six major business divisions:
1.Integrated Defense Systems — based in Tewksbury, Massachusetts
2.Intelligence and Information Systems — based in Garland, Texas.
3.Missile Systems — based in Tucson, Arizona.
4.Network Centric Systems — based in McKinney, Texas.
5.Raytheon Technical Services Company LLC — based in Reston, Virginia
6. Space and Airborne Systems — based in El Segundo, California.