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Melpar
Melpar was an American government contractor in the 20th century Cold War period. At a time when most employment in Washington, DC was directly by the US federal government, Melpar became an early private sector contracting company training a high technology workforce in the area. History In 1945, after the conclusion of World War II, the founders of Melpar Inc (Thomas Meloy and Joseph Parks), at the suggestion of the United States Navy, moved from New York City to the Washington, DC area to obtain government contracts. Meloy had served as an assistant to Henry Stimson during the war. The company name was derived from the first syllable of their last names. In late 1945 Parks accidentally killed himself in a hunting accident; nevertheless Meloy continued promote developing Melpar as an engineering and production company doing business with the Armed forces. He acquired the Carl Miller Engineering Company, a small firm that designed and produced electro-mechanical products. The new ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Westinghouse Air Brake Company
The Westinghouse Air Brake Company (sometimes nicknamed or abbreviated WABCO although this was also confusingly used for spinoffs) was founded on September 28, 1869 by George Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Earlier in the year he had invented the railway air brake in New York state. After having manufactured equipment in Pittsburgh for a number of years, he began to construct facilities and plants east of the city where homes for his employees were built. In 1889, the air brake manufacturing facility was moved to Wilmerding, Pennsylvania, and the company's general office building was built there in 1890. In 1921 the company began manufacturing a modified air brake system for installation in trucks and heavy vehicles. In 1953 WABCO entered the heavy equipment marketplace, buying the assets of leading equipment designer R.G LeTourneau. An entity known as LeTourneau-Westinghouse sold a range of innovative products, including scrapers, cranes and bulldozers until 196 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche Mark from West Berlin. The Western Allies organised the Berlin Airlift (german: Berliner Luftbrücke, lit="Berlin Air Bridge") from 26 June 1948 to 30 September 1949 to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin, a difficult feat given the size of the city and the population. American and British air forces flew over Berlin more than 250,000 times, dropping necessities such as fuel and food, with the original plan being to lift 3,475 tons of supplies daily. By the spring of 1949, that number was often met twofold, with the peak daily delivery totalling 12,941 tons. Among ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Mason University
George Mason University (George Mason, Mason, or GMU) is a public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia with an independent City of Fairfax, Virginia postal address in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area. The university was originally founded in 1949 as a Northern Virginia regional branch of the University of Virginia. Named after Founding Father of the United States George Mason in 1959, it became an independent university in 1972. The school has since grown into the largest public university in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Mason operates four campuses in Virginia ( Fairfax, Arlington, Front Royal, and Prince William), as well as a campus in Incheon, South Korea. The flagship campus is in Fairfax. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". Two professors were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics during their time at George Mason University: James M. Buchanan in 1986 and Vernon L. Smith in 2002. Ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Technology
An institute of technology (also referred to as: technological university, technical university, university of technology, technological educational institute, technical college, polytechnic university or just polytechnic) is an institution of tertiary education (such as a university or college) that specializes in engineering, technology, applied science, and natural sciences. Institutes of technology versus polytechnics The institutes of technology and polytechnics have been in existence since at least the 18th century, but became popular after World War II with the expansion of engineering and applied science education, associated with the new needs created by industrialization. The world's first institution of technology, the Berg-Schola (today its legal successor is the University of Miskolc), was founded by the Court Chamber of Vienna in Selmecbánya, Kingdom of Hungary (now Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia), in 1735 in order to train specialists of precious metal and copper mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Applied Physics Laboratory
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (Applied Physics Laboratory, or APL) is a not-for-profit University Affiliated Research Center, university-affiliated research center (UARC) in Howard County, Maryland. It is affiliated with Johns Hopkins University and employs 8,000 people (2022). The lab serves as a technical resource for the United States Department of Defense, Department of Defense, NASA, and other government agencies. APL has developed numerous systems and technologies in the areas of air and missile defense, surface and undersea naval warfare, computer security, and space science and spacecraft construction. While APL provides research and engineering services to the government, it is not a traditional defense contractor, as it is a UARC and a division of Johns Hopkins University. APL is a scientific and engineering research and development division, rather than an academic division, of Johns Hopkins. Hopkins' Whiting School of Engineering offers par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
COMSAT
COMSAT (Communications Satellite Corporation) is a global telecommunications company based in the United States. By 2007, it had branches in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and several other countries in the Americas. Although it operated many kinds of data communication technologies, it is best known for its satellite communication services. History COMSAT Corporation was created by the Communications Satellite Act of 1962 and incorporated as a publicly traded company in 1963. The primary goal of COMSAT was to serve as a public, federally funded corporation intended to develop a commercial and international satellite communication system press. Although the corporation was government regulated, it was equally owned by some major communications corporations and independent investors. COMSAT began operations with its headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1962, with a six-person founding board of directors appointed by President John F. Kennedy, includ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Covance
Labcorp Drug Development is a contract research organization (CRO) headquartered in Burlington, North Carolina, providing nonclinical, preclinical, clinical and commercialization services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Formerly called Covance,https://drugdevelopment.labcorp.com/commitment/about-labcorp-drug-development.html> the company is part of Labcorp, which employs more than 70,000 people worldwide. Labcorp Drug Development claims to provide the world's largest central laboratory network. Labcorp Drug Development has been met by fierce activism from animal rights leaders including Jane Goodall for its animal testing procedures. History Pre-Labcorp Drug Development companies (1968–1996) The origins of Labcorp Drug Development go back to 1968, when Environmental Sciences Corporation – which manufactured equipment related to laboratory animals – opened for business in the basement of a former grocery store in Seattle, Washington. In 1972, it purchased a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electronics
The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification and rectification, which distinguishes it from classical electrical engineering, which only uses passive effects such as resistance, capacitance and inductance to control electric current flow. Electronics has hugely influenced the development of modern society. The central driving force behind the entire electronics industry is the semiconductor industry sector, which has annual sales of over $481 billion as of 2018. The largest industry sector is e-commerce, which generated over $29 trillion in 2017. History and development Electronics has hugely influenced the development of modern society. The identification of the electron in 1897, along with the subsequent invention of the vacuum tube which could amplify and rectify small ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Information Systems
An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, information storage, store, and information distribution, distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people, structure (or roles), and technology. Information systems can be defined as an integration of components for collection, storage and data processing, processing of data of which the data is used to provide information, contribute to knowledge as well as digital products that facilitate decision making. A computer information system is a system that is composed of people and computers that processes or interprets information. The term is also sometimes used to simply refer to a computer, computer system with software installed. "Information systems" is also an academic field study about systems with a specific reference to information and the complementary networks of computer hardware and soft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical disciplines (including the design and implementation of Computer architecture, hardware and Computer programming, software). Computer science is generally considered an area of research, academic research and distinct from computer programming. Algorithms and data structures are central to computer science. The theory of computation concerns abstract models of computation and general classes of computational problem, problems that can be solved using them. The fields of cryptography and computer security involve studying the means for secure communication and for preventing Vulnerability (computing), security vulnerabilities. Computer graphics (computer science), Computer graphics and computational geometry address the generation of images. Progr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing. The origins of the Internet date back to the development of packet switching and research commissioned by the United States Department of Defense in the 1960s to enable time-sharing of computers. The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1970s to enable resource shari ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sputnik
Sputnik 1 (; see § Etymology) was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for three weeks before its three silver-zinc batteries ran out, and continued in orbit for three months until aerodynamic drag caused it to fall back into the atmosphere on 4 January 1958. It was a polished metal sphere in diameter with four external radio antennas to broadcast radio pulses. Its radio signal was easily detectable by amateur radio operators, and the 65° orbital inclination made its flight path cover virtually the entire inhabited Earth. The satellite's unanticipated success precipitated the American Sputnik crisis and triggered the Space Race, part of the Cold War. The launch was the beginning of a new era of political, military, technological and scientific developments. The word ''sputnik'' is Russian for ''satellite'' when ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
