|
|
|
|
|
|
WJ Communications, Inc.
Watkins-Johnson Company, commonly referred to as Watkins-Johnson or W-J,
was a developer and manufacturer of electronic RF equipment, founded in 1957 by
Dean A. Watkins and H. Richard Johnson in Palo Alto (California, USA).
The company produced a range of UHF, SHF and EHF parts, but is best
known for its range of surveillance and test receivers,
many of which were used
by government agencies.
From 1995 on, parts of W-J were sold to other companies, until finally
in 2008 the remaining WJ Communications was acquired by TriQuint Semiconductor
[1].
TriQuint was merged on 1 January 2015 with RF Micro Devices, under the new name
Qorvo, Inc.
The former company Communication Electronics Inc. (CEI) — which was
responsible for the development of surveillance and monitoring receivers, and had
become a division of Watkins-Johnson in 1967 — was sold to Marconi North America
in August 1999, together with the W-J telecommunications product line. The
companies were bought by Diagnostic Retrieval Systems (DRS) in 2003,
which itself was acquired by the Italian multinational Finmeccanica
in 2008. After a global restructuring in 2016, Finmeccanica was
renamed Leonardo, and the DRS business — which includes the
Watkins-Johnson surveillance receiver legacy — went on as
Leonardo DRS.
|
|
|
Watkins-Johnson equipment on this website
|
|
|
Watkins-Johnson (W-J) was founded in 1957 by Dean A. Watkins and H. Richard Johnson
in Palo Alto (CA, USA). Its main product line were RF components.
In 1967, W-J acquired Communication Electronics Inc. (CEI), a developer of
surveillance receivers in Bethesda (MD, USA).
CEI had been founded in 1960 by Ralph E. Grimm and several others from Vitro
Electronics (Nems-Clarke) [2].
Under W-J, the CEI business unit became a largely autonomous division that
continued to develop surveillance receivers and professional measuring equipment
for the intelligence community.
In 1995, the company started the divestment of several business groups, that were
acquired by various parties. The RF component division was split up and WJ-Communications was eventually sold to TriQuint,
which was merged in 2015 with RF Micro Devices to become Qorvo.
The former CEI business had already been sold in 1999 to Marconi North America,
which itself was acquired by Diagnostic Retrieval Systems (DRS) in 2003.
In 2008, DRS was acquired by the Italian multinational Finmeccanica,
and the former DRS went on as Leonardo DRS. In 2016, following
a major restructuring at Finmeccanica, the company was renamed Leonardo,
after which the surveillance division became known as Leonardo DRS.
|
|
|
|
Any links shown in red are currently unavailable.
If you like the information on this website, why not make a donation?
© Crypto Museum. Created: Wednesday 28 December 2016. Last changed: Sunday, 30 March 2025 - 22:12 CET.
|
 |
|
|
|
