2009 Issue 1 - Raytheon

Legacy of Innnovation
Continued from page 29
Vannevar Bush sent a physicist to meet Percy,
and that’s how he became one of the developers
of the proximity fuse tube. Spencer
and his team’s innovative engineering, along
with trial and error, quickly solved the problems
of breakage. Raytheon would manufacture
more than 100 million subminiature
tubes during WWII. These were used to
shoot down buzz bombs over Britain,
artillery in the Battle of the Bulge, and later
by the Pacific fleet against Kamikaze fighters.
Bush later credited three things for winning
the war: the atomic bomb, radar and the
proximity fuse.
1940s: Changing the Way America Cooks
Many engineers knew that radar radiated
energy that generated heat in various substances,
but it took the agile mind of Percy
Spencer to make the connection between
an incident involving a snack in his coat
pocket and a technology that would
change the way America cooks.
Raytheon microwave oven, 1946
One day in 1945, Percy Spencer was standing
in front of an open magnetron tube
when he noticed a chocolate bar had melted
in his pocket, but was not warm to the
touch. Spencer’s curiosity was piqued, and
he wondered what else he could heat. The
next day he brought in un-popped popcorn
and held the bag in front of the magnetron
30 2009 ISSUE 1 RAYTHEON TECHNOLOGY TODAY
probe, and “It popped as if it were in
front of fire.”
Spencer and co-worker Fritz Gross, the
design engineer of Raytheon’s first SG
radar, put together the first microwave
oven. Using a standard metal garbage
bucket, they cut a hole in the end and
affixed a waveguide over the hole and
began experimenting.
They were cooking popcorn, exploding
eggs, and burning cake mixes while trying
different power levels. Marshall immediately
saw the potential for this mass cooking and
heating. First placed in a Boston restaurant
for testing, the commercial microwave oven
became a fixture on passenger trains and
institutional vending machines and was
used throughout the U.S. Navy. It wasn’t
until after the war that Raytheon executives’
plan to bring the technology to the
home would change the way America cooks.
1950s: Defending the Skies
Engineer Royden Sanders conceived
continuous-wave radar as a homing seeker
Lark missile intercepts drone, 1950
and developed the first missile-guidance
computer, which was installed on the
Navy-designed LARK missile. On Dec. 18,
1950, one of those missiles intercepted a
target drone for the first time in history. As
a result, Raytheon received the contract for
the nation’s first supersonic air-to-air
missile, the Sparrow.
By 1952, Thomas L. Phillips had been
named program manager of the Hawk surface-to-air
and Sparrow III air-to-air guided
missile systems. After the success with the
Sparrow missile, Phillips and his team went
to work on the Hawk system, using stateof-the-art
homing guidance, servo mechanisms
and feedback systems. “It was a very
exciting place to work for a young engineer,”
according to Phillips.
On June 22, 1956, Raytheon’s Hawk air
defense system underwent its first test
launch and interception of a fast-moving
airborne target. With the Hawk surface-toair
missile system, Raytheon acquired and
achieved the entire system: the acquisition
radar, control center, communications, guided
missiles and launcher — handling equipment
and second- and third-echelon maintenance.
“The whole thing, soup to nuts,”
Phillips said.
Phillips was elected Raytheon chairman in
May 1975, having previously served as
President since 1964 and chief executive
officer in 1968. During the 1960s and
1970s, he was the architect behind
Raytheon’s diversification into commercial
businesses. Phillips retired as chairman
and CEO in March 1991 and retired as a
director of the company in April 2000.
1960s: First Working Laser
In May 1960, the world's first laser was
operated successfully at the Hughes
Research Laboratories in Malibu, Calif.
Hughes physicist Theodore Maiman is credited
with its invention — a major breakthrough
in the field of applied physics.
The development of the laser can be traced
to Albert Einstein’s concept of “stimulated
emission of radiation,” which he outlined in
a paper delivered in 1916. However, it was
a 1958 paper on laser theory by two physicists,
Charles Townes and Arthur L.
Schawlow, that started the race to make
Ted Maiman and the ruby laser, 1960