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This office of Litton Industries Data Systems Division was in operation in 1962. Litton became a large, diversified company in the 1950s, benefiting from huge amounts of federal money being spent on armaments (particularly missile technologies) during the Cold War. Litton owned a range of companies in ship-building, typewriter manufacture, home appliances, but most, importantly, in navigation and communications electronics. The company was one of a host of technology firms nurtured by Frederick Terman (1900-1982), a key professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University. Terman encouraged Stanford electrical engineering graduates to found high-tech enterprises in the vicinity of Palo Alto, CA, and later opened the innovative Stanford Industrial Park on land adjacent to the University to help incubate new companies. Charles V. Litton, Sr., (03/13/1904-11/14/1972), founded the company in 1934, working amidst other proto-Silicon Valley electronics start-ups created by Stanford graduates, such as the Hewlett-Packard Corporation and Varian Associates. Litton devised manufacturing methods for radio tubes. Charles Bates "Tex" Thornton (1913-1981), a USAAF colonel, Ford Corporation "Whiz Kid," one-time Pentagon employee and quintessential insider within the military-industrial complex, took Litton over in 1953, and successfully obtained government contracts, building the company into a widely diversified operation. Northrop Grumman, the gigantic defense conglomerate took over Litton in 1999, paying $3.6 billion to swallow it.

PCAD id: 16725