The company's long-standing brands include Goulds Pumps, Cannon connectors, KONI shock absorbers and Enidine energy absorption components.

During the 1960s and 1970s, under the leadership of CEO Harold Geneen, the company rose to prominence as the archetypal conglomerate, deriving its growth from hundreds of acquisitions in diversified industries.

On August 3, 1933, Adolf Hitler received Sosthenes Behn (then the CEO of ITT) and his German representative, Henry Mann, in one of his first meetings with US businessmen.

[10][12][13][need quotation to verify] In his book Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, Antony C. Sutton claims that ITT subsidiaries made cash payments to SS-leader Heinrich Himmler.

In the 1960s, ITT Corporation won $27 million in compensation for damage inflicted on its share of the Focke-Wulf plant by Allied bombing during World War II.

International telecommunications manufacturing subsidiaries included Standard Telephones and Cables in the United Kingdom and Australia, Indosat in Indonesia, Standard Elektrik Lorenz (today part of Nokia Germany) and Intermetall [de] Gesellschaft für Metallurgie und Elektronik mbH (acquired from Clevite in 1965; now TDK-Micronas) in Germany, BTM in Belgium, and CGCT and LMT in France.

These companies manufactured equipment according to ITT designs including the (1960s) Pentaconta crossbar switch and (1970s) Metaconta D, L and 10c Stored Program Control exchanges, mostly for sale to their respective national telephone administrations.

Alec Reeves, an ITT employee in France in the 1930s, developed pulse-code modulation (PCM) innovations, upon which future digital voice-communication was based.

Charles K. Kao, working at STC in the UK, pioneered the use of optical fiber from 1966, for which he was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics.

In order to continue growing while not running afoul of antitrust legislation, it moved to acquire companies outside of the telecommunications industry.

The deals included well-known businesses like the Sheraton hotel chain, Wonder Bread maker Continental Baking, Rayonier, and Avis Rent-a-Car.

By the late 1970s, ITT had a good presence on the UK domestic electrical market in television, audio and portable radio products.

In February 1962, during the presidency of João Goulart, the State Governor of Rio Grande do Sul Leonel Brizola decided to expropriate a Brazilian subsidiary of ITT, the Companhia Telefônica Nacional.

In May 1971, ITT president Geneen pledged $400,000 to support a proposal to hold the convention in San Diego; only $100,000 of the contribution was publicly disclosed.

The memo appeared to draw a connection between ITT's contribution to the convention and the favorable settlement of a United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division lawsuit.

The resulting scandal, including a Senate investigation and the threat of criminal charges, caused ITT to withdraw its support for the San Diego convention.

That combined with a shortage of hotel space and problems with the proposed venue led the RNC to move the convention to Miami.

[21] Special prosecutor Leon Jaworski investigated the case but ultimately concluded there was no evidence of criminal conduct by ITT.

This theory is supported by conversations and exchanges between President Richard Nixon and his chief of staff H. R. Haldeman before and after the break-in, as well as by testimony by E. Howard Hunt.

[25] Declassified documents released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in 2000 reveal that the company financially helped opponents of Salvador Allende's government prepare a military coup.

[44][45] Initially, ITT retained a 37% ownership stake, but in March 1992, it proceeded to sell off its remaining 30%, effectively ceasing its participation in the telephone industry.

The fines resulted from ITT's outsourcing program, in which they transferred night vision goggles and classified information about countermeasures against laser weapons, including light interference filters, to engineers in Singapore, the People's Republic of China, and the United Kingdom.

"[56] An agreement was reached on June 26, 2007 for ITT to acquire the privately held International Motion Control (IMC) for $395 million.

On April 16, 2009, ITT announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Laing GmbH of Germany, a privately held leading producer of energy-efficient circulator pumps primarily used in residential and commercial plumbing and heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.

After a financial downturn, ABC moved out of the building known as "Brown Rock" and sold it to a Japanese conglomerate which then in turn leased a good portion out to ITT Corporation.

The contract was later terminated by the government for convenience because the ASPJ failed independent operational test and evaluation (OPEVAL) procedures.

[67] Some television models feature the Ideal-Computer cartridge system, featuring a slot suitable for housing an ultrasonic remote control (acting as front panel buttons while docked), a teletext decoder, or Tele-Match video game dedicated consoles[68] (unrelated to the "ITT Telematch Processor" console, a rebrand of the Fairchild Channel F); the Ideal-Computer system was licensed to other German producers of its time.

[69] For a comparable time span, ITT had also controlled and then fully absorbed English radio and television manufacturer Kolster-Brandes.

[73] In 2007, ITT was awarded a $207 million initial contract by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to lead a team to develop and deploy the Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) system.