Huntsville-based Teledyne Brown Engineering is celebrating its 65th anniversary this month. The company’s history is closely intertwined with Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal and Cummings Research Park. In 1950, Wernher von Braun and his team of German engineers and scientists were transferred to Redstone Arsenal to begin developing rockets for the U.S. Army. There were no engineering or manufacturing services available in Huntsville at that time. To meet that need, the local chamber of commerce recruited John Bolton, owner of Marietta Tool and Engineering, in Georgia to start a business in the area. Owned by local stockholders, Alabama Engineering and Tool Company opened on July 1, 1953. In 1956, the company merged with Brown’s Engineering Company, an Indianapolis firm owned by R. P. Brown, and was renamed Brown Engineering Company, Inc. Under the forward-thinking leadership of two executives, Milton Cummings and Joe Moquin, the company flourished and became the first tenant of Cummings Research Park. This business park is one of the world’s leading science and technology research parks and is the second largest of its kind in the United States and fourth largest in the world.
The company was brought into the Teledyne family in 1967, giving them access to additional capabilities, including extensive R&D resources, sophisticated instrumentation, advanced electronics, and cutting-edge digital imaging products to strengthen its engineering and advanced manufacturing portfolio.
Teledyne Brown Engineering has supported every major U.S. space initiative, beginning with the Jupiter-C and extending through SkyLab, Space Shuttle, International Space Station, Constellation, and the Space Launch System. The company is currently building the Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter, which is the largest part of the rocket to be built at Marshall Space Flight Center. In recent years, they have expanded into commercial space, partnering with NASA and CASIS to design an innovative Multi-User System for Earth Sensing (MUSES) Platform. MUSES is the first earth observation platform of its kind used to commercialize the International Space Station. The company also provides payload operations support for the International Space Station.
Read the full article here.
