What role did Vannevar Bush play in founding Raytheon?
In 1922, Vannevar Bush co-founded the company that would become the Raytheon Company alongside fellow scientist-engineers Laurence K. Marshall and Charles G. Smith. Originally established in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the American Appliance Company, the firm initially focused on refrigeration technology before shifting its primary interest toward electronics.12
Bush’s involvement was instrumental in the company's early transition into the electronics sector, where it successfully developed a gaseous rectifier—an electron tube that converted alternating current to direct current for radios, thereby eliminating the need for short-lived batteries. By 1925, the business was renamed the Raytheon Manufacturing Company to market this successful technology.2