This is an edited transcript of an oral history interview of Simon Ramo conducted by Peter Westwick. Topics mentioned in the interview include: science and engineering at Caltech; R&D in industry; federal spending and the economy; drone aircraft; intersection of automotive and aerospace industries; Space Technology Laboratories; architecture of Space Park; aerospace connections to Caltech, UCLA, USC; finance vs. engineering backgrounds in management; aerospace work ethic. Simon Ramo was born May 7, 1913, in Salt Lake City. He received a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from the University of Utah in 1933, and then earned PhDs in physics and electrical engineering from Caltech. From 1936 to 1946 he worked on microwave electronics at the General Electric research labs in Schenectady, New York, and on radar during the war. In 1946 he joined Hughes Aircraft as director of research for electronics, developing guided missiles for aircraft. In 1953 Ramo and his Caltech classmate Dean Wooldridge left Hughes to form Ramo-Wooldridge (later, after consolidation with Thompson Products, TRW). Ramo-Wooldridge led the development of the Atlas missile for the U.S. Air Force, among many other aerospace projects. Ramo retired from TRW in 1978 at age 65, but remained active in national science and technology policy. [Object file name], Aerospace Oral History Project, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
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