TRW Inc.

TRW Inc.

Industry	Automotive and aerospace
Fate	Acquired
Successor	TRW Automotive, Northrop Grumman and Goodrich Corporation
Founded	1901
Defunct	2002
Headquarters	Euclid, Ohio / Lyndhurst, Ohio, United States
Key people	Simon Ramo, Dean Wooldridge
Products	Automotive, aerospace and credit reporting
Number of employees	122,258
Subsidiaries	CAV, Girling, LucasVarity Automotive & Lucas Aerospace
Website	www.trw.com

TRW Inc. was an American corporation involved in a variety of businesses, mainly aerospace, automotive, and credit reporting. It was a pioneer in multiple fields including electronic components, integrated circuits, computers, software and systems engineering. TRW built many spacecraft, including Pioneer 1, Pioneer 10, and several space-based observatories. It was #57 on the Fortune 500 list, and had 122,258 employees.

TRW’s roots were founded in 1901, and it lasted for more than a century until being acquired by Northrop Grumman in 2002. It helped create a variety of corporations, including Thompson Ramo Wooldridge (source of TRW acronym), Pacific Semiconductors, the Aerospace Corporation, Bunker-Ramo, Experian, and TRW Automotive which is now part of ZF Friedrichshafen. Persons coming from TRW were important to build up corporations like SpaceX.

In 1953, the company was recruited to lead the development of the United States' first ICBM. Starting with the initial design by Convair, the multi-corporate team launched Atlas in 1957. It flew its full range in 1958, and was adapted to fly the Mercury astronauts into orbit. TRW also led development of the Titan missile, which was later adapted to fly the Gemini missions. The company served the US Air Force as systems engineers on all subsequent ICBM development efforts, but TRW never produced any missile hardware because of the conflict of interest. In 1960, Congress spurred the formation of the non-profit Aerospace Corporation to provide systems engineering to the US government, but TRW continued to guide the ICBM efforts.