Pratt & Whitney

In 1925, the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Co. was registered in Delaware. From the very beginning, it was a company dedicated to the proposition of decentralized procurement.

From 1919 to 1924 Frederick Rentschler managed the Wight plant at Patterson, New Jersey. He found himself at loggerheads with the directors on commitment to R&D funding.

In the summer of 1924, Rentschler resigned as president of the Wright Aeronautical Corporation in New Brunswick.

With the encouragement of the US Navy, Rentschler sought new financial backers and early in 1925 contacted Pratt $& Whitney in Harford.

A passionate advocate of the minority view that the future of the airplane lay in bigger craft, higher speed and greater ranges involving more powerful engines, Rentschler proposed to Pratt & Whitney that it move into the production of air-cooled radial engines – a step sought by the Navy’s Rear Admiral W. A Moffett.

The Pratt & Whitney was co-founded in 1860 by a cousin of Eli Whitney as a machine tool company. Pratt & Whitney had boomed during World War I, but was anxious for a new revenue source. Rentschler outlined a plan to set up a company within a company, using Pratt & Whitney’s long established name with its worldwide reputation for precision machinery.

Rentschler should assemble his team and the Pratt & Whitney would provide capital and work space. He proposed borrowing a million dollars from Pratt & Whitney’s owners (in return for giving them 50 percent of the stock in the new Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company) and using Pratt’s underutilized plant space and tools to make his new engine. Rentschler’s first engine was the famous Wasp, first assembled on Christmas Eve, 1925.

 On May 5, 1926, the US Navy made its first flight test of air-cooled radial Wasp engine. Pratt & Whitney Aircraft shipped 260 Wasps in 1927; by 1929, the number shipped rose to 1656.
Pratt & Whitney

Nano Terra

Nano Terra, Inc. is a privately held nano and micro technology development company and is based in Brighton, Massachusetts.

Nano Terra was founded in 2005 and the company business model is based on establishing long-term collaborations with leading manufacturers and marketers in a wide range of industries.

The company develops surface features for anti-reflective and anti-smudge glass and engineers high-strength and low-abrasion materials. The company also offers displays and electronic packaging materials, fuel cells, batteries and solar power, sensors, and consumer goods.

In 2007 Harvard University granted Nano Terra a license to a portfolio of more than 50 issued and pending patents, which cover nano and microscope molecular fabrication methods for advanced materials and devices.

The deal is one do the largest patent portfolios ever transferred from university to a start-up company.

Around 2008 Nano Terra had a staff of about 30 people and laboratories in Cambridge, Mass. But it also tapped into a global network of academic and industrial collaborators, some of whom are co-inventors of Nana Terra’s IP.

In October 2008, Nano Terra and German drug maker Merck KGaA upgraded their existing product development partnership to a commercialization deal. Nano Terra helped co-develop Merck’s ‘printable electronics’ using nanometer-sized materials and a soft lithography techniques called micro-contact printing.
Nano Terra

Gemalto

Gemalto N.V formed by the 2006 merger of Gemplus International S.A and Axalto, is a leading global provider of digital security systems such as smart cards, payment terminals, card readers, online security programs, e-passports and subscriber identity module (SIM) cards.

Gemplus was a company dedicated to the Smart Cards business, from R&D, manufacture, and personalization, to final customer services. Gemplus was founded in 1988 by Marc Lassus and his colleagues, from a smart card division within ST Microelectronics that had come up with a high volume production process for the payphone smart chip.

Gemplus has successfully implemented portable and secure smart card-based solution to simplify a wide range of applications ranging from public and wireless communications to electronic business.

Axalto, previously known as Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals, is a business unit of Schlumberger Ltd, a global technology service company that has been in operation for 75 years.

In early Mac 2016, Gemalto reported an operating profit of 422.6 million euros, up 10.4 percent against last year and beating the market consensus of 389.6 million euros.
Gemalto