Teapot Committee

The Teapot Committee was the codename of the Strategic Missiles Evaluation Group to evaluate strategic missiles of the U.S. Air Force.

In October 1953, the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Air Force for Research and Development Trevor Gardner established the committee to study strategic missiles including the Snark, Navaho, and Atlas all of which were Air Force projects. Gardner recruited eleven of the nation's leading scientists and engineers: Dr. John von Neumann served as chairman, and the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation (forerunner of TRW) was hired to administer the committee's work. The founders and chief officers of Ramo-Wooldridge, Simon Ramo and Dean Wooldridge, were also full members of the Teapot Committee. Simon Ramo had known Trevor Gardner since before World War II, when both had worked for General Electric at Schenectady, New York. After the war, Ramo joined Hughes Aircraft as head of electronics research and eventually rose to the position of Director of Guided Missile Research and Development; both Ramo and Dean Wooldridge had gained acclaim for their work on the Air Force's Falcon missile. Ramo had become Director of Operations and Executive Vice President when he and Wooldridge, in September 1953, left Hughes to form their own company.

Other members of the Teapot Committee were Clark Blanchard Millikan, Charles C. Lauritsen, and Louis Dunn (all of Caltech); Hendrik Wade Bode (Bell Telephone Labs); Allen E. Puckett (Hughes Aircraft); George Kistiakowsky (Harvard); Jerome B. Wiesner (MIT); and Lawrence A. Hyland (Bendix Aviation). The committee's military liaison was Colonel Bernard A. Schriever, the Air Staff's Assistant for Development Planning and a brigadier general selectee.

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