Raytheon Company

Raytheon was founded in 1922 as the American Appliance Company by three scientist-engineers—Laurence K. Marshall, Charles G. Smith, and Vannevar Bush—in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its focus, which was originally on new refrigeration technology, soon shifted to electronics. The company developed a “gaseous rectifier,” an electron tube able to convert household alternating current to direct current for radios and thus eliminate the need for expensive short-lived batteries. 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. In 1928 Raytheon merged with Q.R.S. Company, an American manufacturer of electron tubes and switches, to form the successor Raytheon Manufacturing Company. In 1933 it diversified by acquiring Acme-Delta Company, a producer of transformers, power equipment, and electronic auto parts.

Early in World War II, physicists in England invented the magnetron, a specialized microwave-generating electron tube that markedly improved the capability of radar to detect enemy planes (see radar: History of radar). American companies were sought to perfect and mass-produce the magnetron for ground-based, airborne, and shipborne radar systems, and, with support from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Radiation Laboratory (recently formed to investigate microwave radar), Raytheon received a contract to build the devices. At war’s end the company was responsible for about 80 percent of all magnetrons manufactured. During the war Raytheon also pioneered the production of shipboard radar systems, particularly for submarine detection.

Raytheon’s research on the magnetron tube revealed the potential of microwaves to cook food. In 1947 the company demonstrated the Radarange microwave oven for commercial use. In 1965 it acquired Amana Refrigeration, Inc., a manufacturer of refrigerators and air conditioners. Using the Amana brand name and its distribution channels, Raytheon began selling the first countertop household microwave oven in 1967 and became a dominant manufacturer in the microwave oven business.

In 1945 the company expanded its electronics capability through acquisitions that included the Submarine Signal Company (founded in 1901), a leading manufacturer of maritime safety equipment. With its broadened capabilities, Raytheon developed the first guidance system for a missile that could intercept a flying target. In 1950 its Lark missile became the first such weapon to destroy a target aircraft in flight. Raytheon then received military contracts to develop the air-to-air Sparrow and ground-to-air Hawk missiles—projects that received impetus from the Korean War. In later decades it remained a major producer of missiles, among them the Patriot antimissile missile and the air-to-air Phoenix missile. In 1959 Raytheon acquired Apelco-Applied Electronics, which significantly increased its strength in commercial marine electronics. In the same year, it changed its name to Raytheon Company.

In 1980 Raytheon acquired Beech Aircraft Corporation, a leading manufacturer of general aviation aircraft founded in 1932 by Walter H. Beech. Raytheon expanded its aircraft activities by adding the Hawker line of business jets through the acquisition in 1993 of Corporate Jets Inc. from British Aerospace (now BAE Systems). As part of the Raytheon aircraft subsidiary, Beech and Hawker produced business jets such as the Hawker 800XP and Horizon, the Beechjet 400A, and the Premier I; the popular Beech King Air series of twin turboprops; and single-engine piston aircraft such as the Beech Bonanza. Beech’s special-mission aircraft, the single-turboprop T-6A Texan II, was chosen to be the primary training aircraft for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy.

In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, Raytheon’s Patriot missile received great international exposure, resulting in a substantial increase in sales for the company outside the United States. In an effort to establish leadership in the defense business, in 1996 Raytheon purchased in quick succession Chrysler Corporation’s defense electronics and aircraft-modification businesses, and in 1997 it bought the defense electronics units of Texas Instruments as well as Hughes Electronics, maker of numerous missile systems. It also divested itself of several nondefense businesses in the 1990s, including Amana Refrigeration. In 2007 it sold its aircraft subsidiary, with its Beech and Hawker product line, to investors that named the new company Hawker Beechcraft, Inc.

(Read Lee Iacocca’s Britannica entry on Chrysler.)