Librascope

Librascope's former building in Glendale, which is currently home to offices for Disney Television Animation

Librascope was a Glendale, California division of General Precision Inc. founded in 1937 by Lewis W. Imm to improve aircraft load balancing, and acquired by General Precision in 1941.

Librascope was a manufacturer of early digital computers sold in both the business and defense markets. They hired Stan Frankel, a Manhattan Project veteran and early ENIAC programmer, to design the LGP-30 desktop computer in 1956.

Librascope was eventually purchased by Singer Corporation and moved into the manufacture of marine systems and land-based C3 (Command, Control, Communication) systems for the international defense industry. The company specialized in Fire control systems for torpedoes - though they continued to work on a variety of other smaller military contracts through the 1970s.

After Singer was taken over by corporate raider Paul Bilzerian, the company was sold to Loral in 1992. The division was eventually sold to Lockheed Martin and was eventually absorbed into the Lockheed Martin Federal Systems, but is now called Lockheed Martin NE&SS-Undersea Systems.

According to documents on history.nasa.gov, the Centaur second-stage rocket used a "Librascope 3". The Librascope for the Atlas-Centaur deep space launch vehicle was a 25-bit drum computer.[1]

References

  1. ↑ Mark DiVecchio. "Univac Athena Missile Guidance Computer". 2011.

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