Formerly | Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc. |
---|---|
Industry |
|
Founded | 1947 |
Founders |
|
Defunct | January 1, 2010 |
Fate | Merger |
Successors | |
Headquarters | Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
Products |
EG&G, formally known as Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc., was a United States national defense contractor and provider of management and technical services. The company was involved in contracting services to the United States government during World War II and conducted weapons research and development during the Cold war era (from 1948 and onward). [1] : 3 It had close involvement with some of the government's most sensitive technologies.
In 1931, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Harold Edgerton, a pioneer of high-speed photography, partnered with his graduate student Kenneth Germeshausen to found a small technical consulting firm. [2] The two were joined by fellow MIT graduate student Herbert E. Grier in 1934. Bernard "Barney" O'Keefe became the fourth member of their fledgling technology group.
The group's high-speed photography was used to image implosion tests during the Manhattan Project. The same skills in precisely timed high-power electrical pulses also formed a key enabling technology for nuclear weapon triggers. After the war, the group continued their association with the burgeoning military nuclear effort and formally incorporated Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc. in 1947. [3]
During the 1950s and 1960s, EG&G was involved in nuclear tests as a major contractor for the Atomic Energy Commission. EG&G made extensive use of the Nevada Test Site (NTS) for weapons development and high-technology military testing at Nellis AFB. EG&G has shared operations responsibility for the NTS with Livermore Labs, Raytheon Services Nevada, Reynolds Electrical and Engineering (REECO) and others. Subsequently, EG&G expanded its range of services, providing facilities management, technical services, security, and pilot training for the U.S. military and other government departments. EG&G builds a variety of sensing, detection and imaging products including night vision equipment, sensors for detection of nuclear material and chemical and biological weapons agents, and a variety of acoustic sensors. The company also supplies microwave and electronic components to the government, security systems, and systems for electronic warfare and mine countermeasures.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the company, then led by O'Keefe, diversified by acquisition into the fields of paper making, instrumentation for scientific, marine, environmental and geophysical users, automotive testing, fans and blowers, frequency control devices and other components including BBD and CCD technology via their Reticon division. In the late 1980s and early 1990s most of these divisions were sold, and on 28 May 1999, the non-government side of EG&G Inc.; formerly NYSE : EGG; purchased the Analytical Instruments Division of PerkinElmer for US$425 million (equivalent to $777.33 million in 2023), also assuming the PerkinElmer name (NYSE : PKI). [4] [5] : C-4 At the time EG&G was based in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and made products for diverse industries including automotive, medical, aerospace and photography. [5] : C-4 At least in 1988, there was either a subsidiary or internal department of EG&G dubbed EG & G Biomolecular that produced the Acugen 402 DNA sequencer, the first (and perhaps only) commercially available automated DNA sequencer that used slab gel electrophoresis and radioactive Sanger sequencing. [6]
From 1999 until 2001, EG&G was wholly owned by The Carlyle Group. [7]
In August 2002, the defense-and-services sector of the company was acquired by defense technical-services giant URS Corporation. URS' EG&G division is headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and employs over 11,000 people. During its heyday in the 1980s, EG&G had about 35,000 employees.
In December 2009, URS announced its decision to discontinue the use of "EG&G" as a division name. The headquarters issued a press release stating that by January 1, 2010 it would discontinue using secondary corporate brands, including the EG&G name and logo. In the same press release, URS stated that it would also retire two other acquired brands, Washington Group and Lear Siegler. URS Chief Executive Officer Martin Koffel explained the change in an e-mail transmitted to employees: "In today's marketplace, it is essential we present a consistent, unified brand to our customers and achieve the competitive advantages enjoyed by our peers in the industry. ... This change will allow us to present a single brand that is easily understood by our clients". Koffel indicated that the move to a single corporate brand would affect neither the internal organization nor the existing reporting structure. However, EG&G Division would become URS Federal Services.
In 2014, URS was acquired by AECOM. In January 2020, AECOM sold its Management Services division, which provides services and support to governmental clients, to the private equity firm American Securities and Lindsay Goldberg for US$2.405 billion (equivalent to $2.83 billion in 2023); the new firm was named Amentum. [8] [9] [10]
EG&G's "Special Projects" division was the notable operator of the Janet Terminal at McCarran International Airport [Now Harry Reid] Las Vegas, Nevada, a service used to transport employees to remote government locations in Nevada and California. [11] EG&G also had a joint venture with Raytheon Technical Services, creating JT3 LLC in 2000, which operates the Joint Range Technical Services contract. [12]
EG&G Technical Services, Inc. and Lear Siegler Services, Inc. consolidated, becoming one of the nation's leading U.S. federal government contractors providing operations and maintenance, systems engineering and technical assistance, and program management, primarily to the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. The companies are separate legal entities, but share a common management. In December 2009, URS announced its decision to discontinue the Lear Siegler name for this division.
Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton, also known as Papa Flash, was an American scientist and researcher, a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is largely credited with transforming the stroboscope from an obscure laboratory instrument into a common device. He also was deeply involved with the development of sonar and deep-sea photography, and his equipment was used in collaboration with Jacques Cousteau in searches for shipwrecks and even the Loch Ness Monster.
A strobe light or stroboscopic lamp, commonly called a strobe, is a device used to produce regular flashes of light. It is one of a number of devices that can be used as a stroboscope. The word originated from the Ancient Greek στρόβος (stróbos), meaning "act of whirling".
Infineon Technologies AG is Germany's largest semiconductor manufacturer. The company was spun-off from Siemens AG in 1999. Infineon has about 58,600 employees in 2023 and is one of the ten largest semiconductor manufacturers worldwide. In 2023 the company achieved sales of €16.309 billion.
URS Corporation was an engineering, design, and construction firm and a U.S. federal government contractor. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, URS was a full-service, global organization with offices located in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia-Pacific.
Fortune Brands was a holding company founded in 1969 as American Brands, renamed in 1997 and split apart in 2011. The corporate headquarters was in Deerfield, Illinois, in the United States. The company had diversified product lines. It announced on December 8, 2010, that it would focus on its liquor business, and spin off or sell other parts of the company including home furnishings, hardware and golf products. The company sold its Titleist and FootJoy product lines to Fila. On October 3, 2011, it split the remainder of its business into two publicly traded companies: Fortune Brands Home & Security and Beam Inc. (NYSE: BEAM). On January 13, 2014, Suntory announced it would buy Beam Inc. for about $13.6 billion. The acquisition was completed on April 30, 2014, for about $16 billion and Beam became a subsidiary of Suntory named Beam Suntory, Suntory Global Spirits since 2024.
Dayforce, Inc., formerly Ceridian, is a provider of human resources software and services with employees across its global footprint in the United States, Canada, Europe, Middle East,Latinamerica, Africa (EMEA), and the Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) region. It is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange.
NYSE Euronext, Inc. was a transatlantic multinational financial services corporation that operated multiple securities exchanges, including the New York Stock Exchange, Euronext and NYSE Arca. NYSE merged with Archipelago Holdings on March 7, 2006, forming NYSE Group, Inc. On April 4, 2007, NYSE Group, Inc. merged with Euronext N.V. to form the first global equities exchange, with its headquarters in Lower Manhattan. The corporation was then acquired by Intercontinental Exchange, which subsequently spun off Euronext.
Los Alamos National Security, LLC was a private limited liability company (LLC) formed by the University of California, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, and URS Energy and Construction. From its creation until November 1, 2018, it operated Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration. It took over direct management and operation of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from the University of California on June 1, 2006. It was based in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Operation of Los Alamos National Laboratory are now overseen by Triad National Security.
Janet and Janet Airlines are the unofficial names of a highly classified fleet of passenger aircraft operated for the United States Department of the Air Force as an employee shuttle to transport military, Department of Defense (DoD) civilians, and contractor employees to Special Access Program Facilities (SAPF). The airline mainly serves the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR) from a private terminal at Las Vegas's Harry Reid International Airport.
Washington Group International was an American corporation which provided integrated engineering, construction, and management services to businesses and governments around the world. Based in Boise, Idaho, WGI had approximately 25,000 employees working in over 40 US states and more than 30 countries. Its primary areas of expertise were: infrastructure, mining, industrial/process, energy & environment, and power. It was acquired by URS Corporation of San Francisco in November 2007 for $3.1 billion, subsequently purchased by AECOM.
A.G. Edwards, Inc. was an American financial services holding company; its principal wholly owned subsidiary was A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc., which operated as a full-service securities broker-dealer in the United States and Europe. The firm was acquired by Wachovia to be folded into Wachovia Securities; Wachovia was subsequently acquired by Wells Fargo, and the securities division was folded into Wells Fargo Advisors. The firm provided securities and commodities brokerage, investment banking, trust services, asset management, financial and retirement planning, private client services, investment management, and other related financial services to individual, governmental, and institutional clients.
AECOM is an American multinational infrastructure consulting firm headquartered in Dallas, Texas.
Lear Siegler Incorporated (LSI) is a diverse American corporation established in 1962. Its products range from car seats and brakes to weapons control systems for military fighter planes. The company's more than $2 billion-a-year annual sales comes from three major areas: aerospace-technology, automotive parts, and industrial-commercial. The company, however, is basically anonymous, since its products are either unmarked or bear only the label "LSI". Lear Siegler went private in 1987.
The Siegler Corporation was incorporated in December 1950 as Siegler Heating Company. Originally a maker of climate control equipment, the company changed its name to Siegler Corporation after merging with Siegler Enamel Range Company Inc. in 1954. In that year, John G. Brooks, a flamboyant entrepreneur, and nine other associates bought the Siegler Corporation of Centralia, Illinois, for $3.3 million; $3.2 million of this was borrowed for 24 hours at a cost of $60,000. Over the next decade and a half, Brooks, who became Siegler’s first president, established a reputation for supervising numerous startling acquisitions.
The Contract Field Teams program is a program of the United States Air Force designed to provide temporary and long-term labor support for a variety of technical service needs; maintenance and repair, depot services, inspections, modernization for contingency support for aircraft, vehicles, weapon systems and other equipment. The CFT program is currently administered by the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center at Tinker Air Force Base, and has been in place since 1951.
Lumen Technologies, Inc. is an American telecommunications company headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, which offers communications, network services, security, cloud solutions, voice and managed services through its fiber optic and copper networks, as well as its data centers and cloud computing services. Its has been on the S&P 600 index since being removed from the S&P 500 in March 2023.
Richard G. Newman is an engineer and businessman. He was president, CEO and chairman emeritus for AECOM (NYSE:ACM), a United States provider of professional technical and management support services. Newman led the launch of AECOM as an independent company in 1990 and served as chief executive officer through September 2005. He led an employee and management purchase of AECOM's original companies from Ashland Corp.
Herbert Earl Grier was an American electrical engineer. While starting his engineering career with MIT during the 1930s to 1940s, Grier co-invented a miniature stroboscope and handheld flash with Harold Edgerton and Kenneth Germeshausen. During World War II, Grier built a firing mechanism during the Manhattan Project that was used in the Fat Man bomb.
Martin Klein is an American engineer and inventor. He worked in the development of the side scan sonar, a tool used in maritime archaeology, deep-sea and coastal survey, marine geology, offshore engineering and military mine defense.
Amentum Services, Inc. is an American government and commercial services contractor based in Chantilly, Virginia. The company was formed in 2020 from the spinout of AECOM's Management Services / federal group. After Leidos, it is the second-largest government services contractor in the US government contracting market.
Even before the stroboscope was available commercially, Edgerton, Germeshausen, and another of Edgerton's students, Herbert E. Grier, were hired as consultants by a variety of industries.
Even before the stroboscope was available commercially, Edgerton, Germeshausen, and another of Edgerton's students, Herbert E. Grier, were hired as consultants by a variety of industries.
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 14, 2019-- AECOM (NYSE:ACM), the world's premier infrastructure firm, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement for the sale of its Management Services (MS) business to affiliates of American Securities LLC and Lindsay Goldberg for a purchase price of $2.405 billion, which reflects an 11.6x multiple on expected fiscal 2019 adjusted EBITDA1 and a premium to AECOM's overall valuation.