Marquardt Corporation

Roy Edward Marquardt was a 1940 aeronautical engineering graduate of The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) who was employed at Northrop during World War II on the YB-35 flying-wing bomber project.

Marquardt's initial products were wind tunnels, but by the end of their first year they had delivered an experimental 20 inch (0.51 m) ramjet to the United States Navy for testing.

The United States Army Air Forces purchased two of the same design early in 1946, and fitted them to the wingtips of a P-51 Mustang fighter for in-flight testing.

Marquardt also provided space and capital for the James B. Lansing Company, a manufacturer of high-quality audio speakers known by the brand "JBL".

In 1948 the newly created United States Air Force took delivery of several larger 30" (0.76 m) designs and fitted them to the wingtips of a P-80 Shooting Star, which became the first manned aircraft to be powered by ramjets alone.

This requires the airflow to be slowed to subsonic speeds for combustion, which is accomplished with a series of shock waves created by a carefully designed inlet.

The purchase wasn't a happy one for General Tire due to management differences, and after making "only" 25% return in one year, they agreed to sell their share of the company to another investor.

Many of them were designed to be shot down as target drones, or simply crash or explode at the end of their mission, so simplicity and low cost was as important as high-speed performance.

Originally they had intended to award the production to a larger company with better manufacturing abilities, as the Van Nuys plant wouldn't be able to build the 1,500 engines quickly enough.

Another new product line started with the introduction of their first ram-air turbine, small air-powered generators for providing aircraft with electric power if the main engine failed.

In 1962, Marquardt was licensed by the Southern Pacific Railroad to design and produce a device called the "Grade Crossing Predictor", developed at Stanford University.

It enabled the warning lights and gates at grade-level crossings to be lowered based on the speed of an approaching train, rather than at a fixed distance, reducing grade-crossing congestion in populated areas like Chicago.

In 1964, Marquardt purchased a small aerospace firm in Mineola, New York named Automation Laboratories, Inc. (ALI),[7] principally to use their television broadcast expertise in developing a missile launch simulator for the Sheridan Battle Tank.

Antonio Ferri was an Italian aerospace scientist who studied supersonic flight in Italy prior to World War II.

In 1962 North American Aviation selected Marquardt to provide the reaction control system engines for the Apollo program spacecraft.

In 1960, Roy Marquardt had told the employees of the company that government procurement of the Bomarc Missile would end in mid-1962, and that an effort must be made to replace that business.

In a newsletter for summer, 1960, he said "I believe that one of our more important actions this year has been to greatly increase company-sponsored and financed research and development, a program started late last year ... Much hard work lies ahead if we are to develop the programs and business replacing the Bomarc as it phases out..."[14] Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, Marquardt and its subsidiaries were a hot bed of scientific research activity.

Marquardt made significant advances in many fields, including space propulsion, medicine, optics, life in space, panoramic photography (the VueMarq System), transportation, hypersonic flight, high-temperature metallurgy, water desalination, slurry fuels, underwater propulsion, ram air turbines, afterburners and thrust-reversers for jet aircraft, computer storage, anti-mortar defense systems, FAX machines, television transmission, LED research, and devices as seemingly mundane as pick-up shoes for electric locomotives powered by third-rail power.

He kept a large roster of scientists and engineers in the company, and believed that the technical staff should make up about ⅓ of all the personnel of Marquardt.

In 1966, the new president announced that in his first year (1965) he had increased profits in part by the "... elimination of research and development efforts that weren't directly related to the company's current activities".

The idea was to combine the booster and ramjet into a single airframe, thereby reducing cost, size, and range safety requirements, as nothing would be jettisoned in flight.

Marquardt took advantage of its advanced metal-forming talents to fill the void left by the end of Bomarc ramjet production.

[23][24] Roy Marquardt subsequently engaged in numerous charitable activities in the Los Angeles area, while Antonio Ferri became the Vincent Astor Professor of Aerospace Sciences at New York University.

Within a few years, the name of the company was changed back to "CCI Inc." and the effort intensified to spin-off or sell the balance of Marquardt it had acquired in 1968.

Its ownership has passed through a series of owners including GenCorp,[26] Allied Aerospace, and Alliant Techsystems;[27] it is now part of Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, located on eastern Long Island, New York.

The device, using a method called sorbent dialysis had been developed by Marquardt while its scientists were conducting a study for NASA on water purification during long-duration space missions.

In December 1991, the other main business, a rocket-propulsion division, was sold to Kaiser Aerospace & Electronics Corp.[35] The original Marquardt Co. became principally a landlord, retaining ownership of 56 acres and several buildings near Van Nuys Airport.

Kaiser sold the bipropellant rocket engine product line to Primex Technologies in 2000[38] (now Aerojet Rocketdyne) and closed the Van Nuys plant in 2001.

With the sale of Kaiser-Marquardt and the thruster rocket business to Primex in 2000, the name Marquardt disappeared completely from American aerospace industry.