Watkins-Johnson Company was a designer and manufacturer of electronic devices, systems, and equipment. The company, commonly referred to as "W-J", was formed in 1957 by Dean A. Watkins and H. Richard Johnson, and was headquartered in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

. Its products included microwave tubes, followed by solid-state microwave devices, electronic warfare subsystems and systems, receiving equipment, antennas, furnaces and semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and automated test equipment.

History

Partial Corporate Timeline * December 1957: Watkins-Johnson Company was founded * June 1963: Acquired Stewart Engineering Company, a manufacturer of backward-wave oscillators * Fall 1967: Acquired Communication Electronics, Inc. (CEI) of

Rockville, Maryland Rockville is a city that serves as the county seat of Montgomery County, Maryland, and is part of the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. The 2020 census tabulated Rockville's population at 67,117, making it the fifth-largest community in ...

, producer of receivers and related equipment * June 1968: Listed on

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed c ...

* 1970: Acquired RELCOM, manufacturer of electronic components such as mixers * 1970: Acquired antenna product line from Granger Associates * 1978: Opened plant in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...

* April 1995: Microwave surveillance systems unit sold to Condor Systems, Inc. * October 1997: Military devices and subsystem businesses sold to Stellex Industries * July 1999: Semiconductor Equipment Group sold to Silicon Valley Group * August 1999: Telecommunications Group sold to Marconi North America * October 1999: Wireless Products Group sold to Fox-Paine and Company * August 2000: Initial Public Offering of WJ Communications, W-J successor, by Fox-Paine on

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

* March 2008: WJ Communications acquired by

TriQuint Semiconductor TriQuint Semiconductor was a semiconductor company that designed, manufactured, and supplied high-performance RF modules, components and foundry services. The company was founded in 1985 in Beaverton, Oregon before moving to neighboring Hillsboro, ...

The Watkins-Johnson plant in

Scotts Valley, California Scotts Valley is a small city in Santa Cruz County, California, United States, about thirty miles (48 km) south of downtown San Jose and six miles (10 km) north of the city of Santa Cruz, in the upland slope of the Santa Cruz Mounta ...

was discovered to have soil and groundwater contamination in 1984. It was added to the

EPA The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it be ...

Superfund Superfund is a United States federal environmental remediation program established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The program is administered by the United States Environmental Pro ...

list in 1990.

References

External links

Watkins-Johnson history site

W-J Tech Notes archive
Electronics companies established in 1957 Defunct companies based in California Companies based in Palo Alto, California Electronics companies of the United States Superfund sites in California Electronics companies disestablished in 2008 2008 disestablishments in California 1957 establishments in California {{US-manufacturing-company-stub