Eyring Research Institute

Eyring Research Institute was founded as an American non-profit organization, on September 6, 1972, in Provo, Utah.

Carlyle Harmon established the Eyring Research Institute with Dr. Ronald G. Hansen as President. This Institute did consulting work in various areas of contract research in cooperation with BYU.

ERI spawned many high-tech spin-offs, including WordPerfect, Novell, and Dynix in computers and some in the military and communication areas that have all benefited the world.

Being asked by BYU to assist them with their patent policy Carlyle Harmon was in a position to make suggestions as to research projects being funded at BYU.

I knew the government was clamping down hard on conducting research at educational institutions and I had a desire to build an institute to do contract research. I talked with Dr. Armin Hill, Dean of the College of Engineering and Technology at BYU. Following our discussions, it was determined to organize an entity that would actually do the work and get projects going. We felt that we could get enough part-time qualified BYU scientists working as supervisors to start our own research institute, and using this method we could do some worthwhile research.

I also worked closely with the President of BYU, Dallin Oaks, who has since been called to be an Apostle of the LDS Church.

I finally came up with “Eyring Research Institute” because Henry Eyring was the greatest scientist the LDS (Mormons) had produced. Henry Eyring said, “Anything I can do to help the Church, I will do." Henry Eyring also agreed to be one of our trustees and later was one of our directors.

Our first funded project is known as TISC (Totally Integrated Simulation Computer) and this AirForce program provided work for the Institute for over thirteen years of continuous funding. It was sponsored by the U.S. AirForce facility that simulates flights of the Minuteman II & III, and Migetman. In addition to TISC, we had two major multimillion dollar programs that have run for more than ten years, such as MDAS (Minuteman Data Acquisition System, and Missile Reliability System, both of which bring in data from every single missile in our missile force (“Star Wars” program). Much of our work became classified and more sophisticated and we enjoyed a remarkable reputation.

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