Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory

Calspan Corporation is a science and technology company founded in 1943 as part of the Research Laboratory of the Curtiss-Wright Airplane Division at Buffalo, New York. Calspan consists of four primary operating units: Flight Research, Transportation Research, Aerospace Sciences [Transonic Wind Tunnel], and Crash Investigations. The company's main facility is in Cheektowaga, New York, while it has other facilities such as the Flight Research Center in Niagara Falls, New York, and remote flight test operations at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and Patuxent River, Maryland. Calspan also has thirteen field offices throughout the Eastern United States which perform accident investigations on behalf of the United States Department of Transportation.

The facility was started as a private defense contractor in the home front of World War II. As a part of its tax planning in the wake of the war effort, Curtiss-Wright donated the facility to Cornell University to operate "as a public trust" and received a charitable tax deduction. Seven other east coast aircraft companies also donated $675,000 to provide working capital for the lab.

The lab operated under the name Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory from 1946 until 1972. During this same time, Cornell formed a new Graduate School of Aerospace Engineering on its Ithaca, New York campus. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, universities came under criticism for conducting war-related research particularly as the Vietnam War became unpopular, and Cornell University tried to sever its ties. Similar laboratories at other colleges, such as the Lincoln Laboratory and Draper Laboratory at MIT came under similar criticism, but some labs, such as Lincoln, retained their collegiate ties. Cornell accepted a $25 million offer from EDP Technology, Inc. to purchase the lab in 1968. However, a group of lab employees who had made a competing $15 million offer organized a lawsuit to block the sale. In May 1971, New York's highest court ruled that Cornell had the right to sell the lab. At the conclusion of the suit, EDP Technology could not raise the money, and in 1972, Cornell reorganized the lab as the for-profit "Calspan Corporation" and then sold its stock in Calspan to the public.

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