Rockwell Collins, Inc. was a multinational corporation headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, providing avionics and information technology systems and services to government agencies and aircraft manufacturers.

Collins provided the equipment to establish a communications link with the South Pole expedition of Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd in 1933.

In 1936, Collins had begun production of the 12H audio console, 12X portable field announcers box, and the 300E and 300F broadcast transmitters.

[citation needed] In the postwar years, the Collins Radio Company expanded its work in the communications field, while broadening its technology into flight-control instruments, radio-communication devices, and satellite voice transmissions.

[7] The company had acquired several companies, including Hughes-Avicom's in-flight entertainment business (1998), Sony Trans Com (2000), Intertrade Ltd., Flight Dynamics, K Systems, Inc. (Kaiser companies), Communication Solutions, Inc., Airshow, Inc. (2002), NLX (Simulation Business) in 2003,[8] portions of Evans & Sutherland, TELDIX GmbH, IP Unwired, Anzus Inc. in 2006, Information Technology and Applications Corp in 2007, Athena Technologies, Datapath Inc. (divested in 2014), SEOS Displays Ltd., Air Routing International in 2010,[9] Computing Technologies for Aviation (CTA) in 2011,[10] ARINC in 2014,[11] and BE Aerospace in 2017.

[19] Starting in the mid-1930s, the Collins Radio Company constructed and sold transmitters and audio mixing consoles to the broadcast industry.

In 1939, the model 12 Speech Input Console, in addition to the 26C limiter amplifier, was licensed to Canadian Marconi Co. for both sales in Canada and His Majesty's Service for the war effort.

[citation needed] Collins' success in constructing broadcast transmitters continued to grow, selling well over a thousand up to the start of World War II.

During World War II, Collins' expertise grew in high-power transmitters, producing designs that ran well over 15 kilowatts (kW) of RF power on a continuous basis.

[citation needed] The transmitter line was later sold to Continental Electronics, which continued to produce a number of Collins designs under its own nameplate before phasing them out in the 1980s.

During World War II, Collins produced high-power transmitters for aircraft, notably the ART-13 equipped with automatic tuning circuits, which represented an important enhancement for airborne radio communications.

The United States Coast Guard Cutter USCGC Courier was employed as seagoing relay station for Voice of America programming using two Collins 207B-1 transmitters.

This set achieved excellent stability for the time due to high build quality and the use of a permeability tuned oscillator in its second conversion stage.

With the experience gained in the design of the 75A-1, Collins released the 51J-1 receiver, a general-coverage HF set covering 500 kHz to 30 MHz.

At the request of the US government, Collins designed the 51S-1 general-coverage set, which was essentially (in intended use) a physically smaller replacement for the 51J series.

Together, these two innovations put Collins temporarily ahead of its competition, and set the stage for other manufacturers and the next generation of amateur (and military) HF radio equipment.

The units included crystal band-pass filters and a new compact design that provided stable, highly linear tuning across 200 kHz band segments.

Illustrating the uniqueness of their new, smaller units in the market, Collins advertisements in the 1950s and early 1960s emphasized the S/Line's physical styling and size, as often as they did its performance.

They had a goal of automating all functions from parts ordering and inventory to factory scheduling to generation of maintenance provisioning.

With products technically successful and far ahead of their time in many respects, Mr. Collins continued to invest in development at a rate that could not be supported by sales when a downturn occurred, and began to have financial problems.

I&SS provides a common service to both CS and GS divisions, and its formation was announced on the Rockwell Collins press release web page on February 19, 2010.

It maintains a portfolio that balances short-term deliverables focused on core and adjacent markets, with technologies for long-term growth.

Groups of Collins users also organize meetings, gatherings at hamfests, and regularly scheduled on-air discussions called nets.