TRW Inc.

TRW Inc., major American industrial corporation providing advanced-technology products and services primarily in the automotive, defense, and aerospace sectors. The company was formed in 1958 as Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc. from the merger of Thompson Products, Inc., and Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation. Its name was changed to TRW Inc. in 1965. Headquarters are in Cleveland, Ohio.

TRW is the largest independent automotive supplier in North America and among the largest in the world. It designs and manufactures steering and suspension systems, engine components, occupant-restraint systems (including seat belts, child seats, and air bags), electrical and electronic components (for example, remote keyless entry systems), and fasteners. Its space and defense activities include aircraft avionics and space surveillance systems, laser-based missile defense systems, scientific and defense satellites, data communications packages for satellites, and commercial communications satellite systems. In 2000 TRW employed more than 120,000 people worldwide, nearly two-thirds outside the United States.

TRW was established in 1901 by David Kurtz and four other Cleveland residents as the Cleveland Cap Screw Company to make screws, bolts, and studs. In 1904 a welder in the company, Charles E. Thompson, devised a way to adapt cap-screw manufacturing methods to the production of automobile-engine valve stems. Thompson took his idea to the pioneer automaker Alexander Winton, who was so impressed that he bought Cleveland Cap Screw and installed Thompson as general manager. In 1908 the firm’s name was changed to Electric Welding Products Company, and, when Thompson took over the company from Winton in 1915, it was incorporated as Steel Products Company, acquiring the Michigan Electric Welding Company and the Metals Welding Company. By that time the company had become the leading American manufacturer of automobile valves. In 1921 the company advanced valve-making technology with the Silcrome valve, an extremely rugged valve that allowed aircraft engines to run continuously for extended periods, permitting long-distance aviation. In honour of its president, the company was renamed Thompson Products, Inc., in 1926. At the outbreak of World War II, the firm turned its attention to aircraft engine parts and later expanded to include a complete line of gas-turbine products for the aircraft industry.

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Atlas D rocket launching U.S. astronaut Gordon Cooper into orbit aboard a Mercury space capsule, May 15, 1963.

UPI/Bettmann Archive

In 1953, while seeking new growth markets in aerospace and electronics, Thompson Products agreed to provide financial support to two engineers, Simon Ramo and Dean Wooldridge, who had decided to leave Hughes Aircraft Company (see Hughes Electronics Corporation) to set up their own electronics firm. The new venture, named Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation and based in Los Angeles, quickly gained a high reputation in the advanced-technology business. In the mid 1950s Ramo-Wooldridge provided systems engineering work and technical direction to the U.S. Air Force for its intercontinental ballistic missile program. Some of the rockets that emerged from the program, such as the Atlas, later became important launchers for spacecraft.

In 1958 Thompson and Ramo-Wooldridge merged to become Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc., which was later shortened to TRW Inc. The company’s involvement in the missile program helped it to compete in the infant space industry. It was the first private company to build a spacecraft, Pioneer 1 (launched into lunar orbit in 1958), and it subsequently became a major manufacturer of defense and scientific spacecraft, including component satellites of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite network, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (launched in 1991), and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (launched in 1999). Beginning in 1970, TRW also became active in high-energy laser research and development. In 2000 its high-energy chemical-laser and radar-tracking system, developed for the U.S. Army, was the first integrated laser weapon to detect and destroy an operational rocket carrying a live warhead in flight.

In the 1960s and early ’70s TRW accelerated its diversification through internal growth and acquisitions. With the purchase of the Credit Data Corporation in 1969, it entered the financial services information industry. In 1999 the company acquired England’s LucasVarity PLC, a designer and manufacturer of advanced-technology products and systems for the automotive and aerospace industries. LucasVarity had been created in 1996 through the merger of Lucas Industries PLC (founded as a lamp-making firm in 1875 in Birmingham, England) and the American firm Varity Corporation (with Canadian roots reaching back to the mid 1800s).