Radiation, Inc. (1950-1967) — Melbourne, Florida

Radiation, Inc. was an electronics engineering company founded in Melbourne in 1950 that grew into the core of today's L3Harris. The Florida Tech archives collection guide states that Homer Denius and George Shaw founded it in 1950, that it was first located in an old Naval building at the Melbourne Airport, and that it focused on developing PCM telemetry systems, digital data communications systems and tracking antennas. Seventeen years later it merged with Harris-Intertype Corporation, the printing-press maker that became Harris Corporation.

Radiation is the reason Harris has a Melbourne address at all. The Evans Library annual-report exhibit dates the merger to July 12, 1967, and says the legacy of Radiation Inc. and its founders lies in the later success of Harris Corporation in communication and technology markets. This page covers the company from its founding at the former Naval Air Station Melbourne to that 1967 merger.

Both founders were electrical engineers who chose Melbourne deliberately. A Florida Tech News history by Gordon Patterson (August 24, 2020) reports that Homer Denius was born in 1914 in Appomattox, Virginia, built his first radio at age 10, earned an electrical engineering degree from the University of Cincinnati and went to work for Melpar Corp. in Alexandria, Virginia, after World War II. In 1949 Denius and his friend George Shaw gave up their jobs, sold their Washington homes and moved to what Patterson calls a sleepy east-central Florida town called Melbourne.

The bet was on the missile range. Patterson writes that the two men believed there was a future in government contracts supporting the missile test project taking shape at Cape Canaveral. The International Directory of Company Histories, as published on Encyclopedia.com, adds that Radiation began with a staff of only 12, housed in space rented from the Naval Air Station in Melbourne, a site it calls convenient because it lay only a few miles south of the Cape Canaveral launch area.

Radiation built the electronics that let rockets and satellites report back to the ground. The Radiation Inc. Archives at Florida Tech's Evans Library describe the Melbourne engineers as pioneers of electronics for the space and defense industries, specializing in PCM telemetry, satellite earth stations, spacecraft electronics, electronic surveillance and satellite reconnaissance. The annual-report exhibit lists programs including Courier, Doppler radar, Apollo, Saturn, Titan, Minuteman, the Lunar Excursion Module and the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory.

The company history on Encyclopedia.com names more of the work: equipment for the Telstar and Courier communication satellites, the Nimbus and Tiros weather satellites, and the Atlas, Polaris and Minuteman missiles. It states that from the start Radiation produced miniaturized electronics, tracking and pulse-code-modulation technologies, and that its stock was first sold to the public in 1956. Joseph Boyd, who joined from the University of Michigan in 1962 and became president within a year, set up a microelectronics plant to develop integrated circuits, which Encyclopedia.com calls the first significant action of his presidency at the Melbourne firm.

Radiation's customers reached far beyond Brevard County. The ArchivesSpace guide lists contracts with Boeing, Northrop Grumman, the Radio Corporation of America, General Electric and General Motors, and photographs of overseas installation projects in the United Kingdom, Germany, Guam and Asmara, Eritrea. The Florida Tech radio telemetry subject listing describes the company in two archived collections as an engineering company based in Melbourne that focused on communications electronics from 1950 to 1967.

Growth was rapid on the Melbourne mainland. The Florida Tech collection guide states that facilities were later added in Palm Bay and Orlando, along with expansions throughout Melbourne. Encyclopedia.com reports that by 1967 the company was one of the largest employers in Florida, at 3,000 employees, with sales above $50 million a year.

Sources at Florida Tech give two different headcounts for the merger year. The ArchivesSpace guide says Radiation had over 3,000 employees when it merged with Harris-Intertype in 1967, while the Evans Library digital collection states that only seventeen years after its founding the company had grown to 5,000 employees. Both figures describe a firm that had become one of the dominant employers in a town of 4,011 residents in 1945, according to Weona Cleveland's history for the Genealogical Society of South Brevard.

The merger joined a Melbourne space electronics firm to an Ohio printing machinery company. Encyclopedia.com recounts that Harris-Intertype chairman George Dively wanted electronics for a product line that was still mechanical, and that Dively and president Richard Tullis paid $56 million for Radiation, a price considered steep at the time. The companies merged in 1967 under the Harris-Intertype name. Dively remained chairman, Homer Denius became vice-chairman and Joseph Boyd became executive vice-president for electronics.

After the merger annual sales passed $250 million and combined employment exceeded 12,000, according to the same company history. It describes the merger as the origin of a strategy called technology transfer, developing commercial uses for technology first built for the government; electronic newsroom systems, for example, came from a Radiation study of how to update Harris presses. The Radiation name was eventually discontinued, and the archives note that camaraderie persisted through the merger with Harris Corp in 1967. Florida Tech News sums up the lineage: seventeen years after its founding, Radiation Inc. would become Harris Corp., today L3Harris Technologies.

Radiation helped found Melbourne's university. Florida Tech News reports that Denius and Shaw backed Jerome Keuper's 1958 idea for Brevard Engineering College, now Florida Tech, and offered classroom space in Radiation Inc. Building No. 1. Denius formed the Denius Foundation in 1960, and in 1961, after the college acquired 40-plus acres off Country Club Road in Melbourne, he transferred 1,000 shares of Radiation stock to it. The Homer R. Denius Student Center was dedicated on February 22, 1969, and Denius died in April 2006 at age 92.

The company's paper trail sits on the same Melbourne campus. The Harry P. Weber University Archives hold the Radiation, Inc. Small Collections, 2.51 cubic feet in seven boxes, and the online Radiation Inc. Archives list 782 items, including manuals, photographs and engineers' records. The collection guide notes that former employees began holding Radiation Old Timer reunions in 1996, and many of the donated items came from those gatherings.