This is an edited transcript of an oral history interview of Clarence B. (Budd) Cohen conducted by Peter Westwick. Topics mentioned in the interview include: relation between auto and space programs in TRW; relation between design engineering and manufacturing; secrecy and classification; aerospace work ethic; women in aerospace ; minorities in aerospace ; emergence of computing; relation with local universities; diversification of TRW programs; end of the Cold War; and TRW merger with Northrop Grumman. Clarence Budd Cohen was an aerospace engineer at TRW for three decades. He was born February 7, 1925, in Monticello, New York. In 1945 he graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a degree in aeronautical engineering, under the Navy V-1 program. Upon graduation he entered the Navy as en engineering officer. He then obtained a master’s degree from RPI in 1947, and went to work for the Aircraft Engine Research Lab in Cleveland (soon renamed the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory) under the NACA, working on supersonic theory. In 1950 he won a Guggenheim fellowship and returned to graduate school at Princeton, earning his PhD in 1954. He returned to Lewis for two years and then in 1956 accepted a job at Ramo-Wooldridge, working on the Atlas ICBM. In the 1960s he shifted to a technology-transfer program to exploit TRW’s patents. He retired in 1987 but continued to consult for TRW. [Object file name], Aerospace Oral History Project, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
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