Calspan Corporation is a science and technology company founded in 1943 as part of the Research Laboratory of the

Curtiss-Wright The Curtiss-Wright Corporation is a manufacturer and services provider headquartered in Davidson, North Carolina, with factories and operations in and outside the United States. Created in 1929 from the consolidation of Curtiss, Wright, and v ...

Airplane Division at

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...

. 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 Cheektowaga () is a town in Erie County, New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town has grown to a population of 89,877. The town is in the north-central part of the county, and is an inner ring suburb of Buffalo. The town is the ...

, while it has other facilities such as the Flight Research Center in

Niagara Falls Niagara Falls () is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge, spanning the border between the province of Ontario in Canada and the state of New York in the United States. The largest of the three is Horseshoe Fall ...

, New York, and remote flight test operations at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and

Patuxent River The Patuxent River is a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay in the state of Maryland. There are three main river drainages for central Maryland: the Potomac River to the west passing through Washington, D.C., the Patapsco River to the northeast ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

. 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 United States Department of Transportation (USDOT or DOT) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is headed by the secretary of transportation, who reports directly to the President of the United States a ...

History

The facility was started as a private defense contractor in the home front of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. As a part of its tax planning in the wake of the war effort, Curtiss-Wright donated the facility to

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

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 Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named ...

campus. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, universities came under criticism for conducting war-related research particularly as the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...

became unpopular, and

tried to sever its ties. Similar laboratories at other colleges, such as the

Lincoln Laboratory The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and de ...

and

Draper Laboratory Draper Laboratory is an American non-profit research and development organization, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts; its official name is The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc (sometimes abbreviated as CSDL). The laboratory specialize ...

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. Calspan was the first in a series of corporate owners that have included Arvin Industries, Space Industries International, Veridian Corporation and General Dynamics. In 2005, Calspan Corporation was returned to independent ownership when a local management group purchased the Aeronautics and Transportation Testing Groups of the Western New York operation from General Dynamics. Under the name of Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory were inventions of the first

crash test dummy A crash test dummy, or simply dummy, is a full-scale anthropomorphic test device (ATD) that simulates the dimensions, weight proportions and articulation of the human body during a traffic collision. Dummies are used by researchers, automobile ...

in 1948, the automotive seat belt in 1951, the first mobile field unit with Doppler

weather radar Weather radar, also called weather surveillance radar (WSR) and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, and estimate its type (rain, snow, hail etc.). Modern weather radars are mostly pulse- ...

for weather-tracking in 1956, the first accurate airborne

simulation A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the s ...

of another

aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engine ...

(the

North American North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Ca ...

X-15 The North American X-15 is a hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft. It was operated by the United States Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as part of the X-plane series of experimental aircraft. The X-15 set spee ...

) in 1960, the first successful demonstration of an automatic

terrain-following radar Terrain-following radar (TFR) is a military aerospace technology that allows a very-low-flying aircraft to automatically maintain a relatively constant altitude above ground level and therefore make detection by enemy radar more difficult. It is ...

system in 1964, the first use of a

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fi ...

beam to successfully measure

gas density Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the substance's mass per unit of volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' can also be used. Mathematically ...

in 1966, the first independent HYGE sled test facility to evaluate automotive restraint systems in 1967, the mytron, an instrument for research on neuromuscular behavior and disorders in 1969, and the prototype for the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

fingerprint A fingerprint is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. The recovery of partial fingerprints from a crime scene is an important method of forensic science. Moisture and grease on a finger result in fingerprints on surfac ...

reading system in 1972. CAL served as an "honest broker" making objective comparisons of competing plans to build military hardware. It also conducted classified counter-insurgency research in

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...

for the Defense Department. By the time of its divestiture, CAL had 1,600 employees. Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory conducted

wind tunnel Wind tunnels are large tubes with air blowing through them which are used to replicate the interaction between air and an object flying through the air or moving along the ground. Researchers use wind tunnels to learn more about how an aircraft ...

tests on models of a number of skyscrapers, including the

John Hancock Tower 200 Clarendon Street, previously John Hancock Tower and colloquially known as The Hancock, is a 60-story, skyscraper in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston. It is the tallest building in New England. The tower was designed by Henry N. Cobb of ...

in Boston, Massachusetts.

Products and services

Calspan offers a variety of products and services:

Aerospace

* Aircraft modifications and certification *

Flight test Flight testing is a branch of aeronautical engineering that develops specialist equipment required for testing aircraft behaviour and systems. Instrumentation systems are developed using proprietary transducers and data acquisition systems. D ...

services and airborne testbeds * Test pilot and flight training * In-flight simulation * Flight control and

handling qualities Flying qualities is one of the three principal regimes in the science of flight test, which also includes performance and systems. Flying qualities involves the study and evaluation of the stability and control characteristics of an aircraft. They h ...

* UAV surrogates * High-speed wind tunnel testing (up to 1,000 MPH) * Low-speed wind tunnel testing (up to 75 MPH) * Aerodynamic analysis and research * Subsonic/Transonic wind tunnel operation and maintenance * Calspan Air Services fixed-base operator services

Transportation

Active safety The term active safety (or primary safety) is used in two distinct ways. The first, mainly in the United States, refers to automobile safety systems that help avoid accidents, such as good steering and brakes. In this context, passive safety re ...

research and testing *

Autonomous vehicle Vehicular automation involves the use of mechatronics, artificial intelligence, and multi-agent systems to assist the operator of a vehicle (car, aircraft, watercraft, or otherwise).Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Lanzon, A.,Group Coordinated Control o ...

research and testing *

Crashworthiness Crashworthiness is the ability of a structure to protect its occupants during an impact. This is commonly tested when investigating the safety of aircraft and vehicles. Depending on the nature of the impact and the vehicle involved, different crit ...

and crash test * Safety research and data collection * Proving ground rental * Tire research and tire test * Sled test and impact simulation * Component and subsystem testing * Crash investigation * Accident re-creation and litigation support * Crash seminars * First responder training * Dummy rental * Dummy purchases * Dummy calibration services * Certification and homologation

General

* Consulting * Test services * High-speed video or camera rental * Instrumentation and electronic systems * Machining and fabrication * Test support and test management

Airplanes

Calspan owns and operates a fleet of advanced experimental aircraft, including four Learjets, a Gulfstream G-III, a SAAB 340, and a Hawker-Beechcraft Bonanza aerobatic airplane.

References

{{reflist

External links

Calspan Corporation website