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EWEX KNIGHT CORP. grew out of the Harvard doctoral thesis of Harold Ewen. Working with Harvard's Nobel-Prizewinning Physicist Edward Purcell (in '52, for nuclear magnetic measurement), Ewen developed and built equipment to locate and trace hydrogen clouds several hundred thousand light years distant from earth. This resulted in no less than a remapping of the solar system. With a fellow scientist's $1,000 and his own theories, Ewen started his company in 1952. turned out radiometers (receiving systems for radio telescopes), radio sextants, microwave components. Last year Ewen Knight chalked up $2,000,000 in sales, expects $3,500,000 this year.
HIGH VOLTAGE ENGINEERING CORP. sprang from wartime research by M.I.T. Physicist Robert Van de Graaff. M.I.T. Engineer John Trump and British Engineer Denis M. Robinson. They started manufacturing Buck Rogers gear in a dreary Cambridge garage, moved to Route 128 in 1956. High Voltage now builds giant (three stories high) particle accelerators that can sterilize materials by firing a stream of electrons through them. The accelerators are also used for high-energy physics studies and for breaking down chromosomes to study their properties, may soon be used commercially to irradiate food so that it will keep for years without refrigeration. High Voltage is also working with B. F. Goodrich Co. on ion-propulsion engines for spaceships. Its expected sales this year: $7,000,000.
ITEK CORP. started when its president, a wartime aerial-reconnaissance expert named Richard Leghorn (M.I.T. '39), borrowed $142,000 from Laurance Rockefeller to buy two science-heavy organizations after the defense-spending cutback hit research in 1957. With these two—Physical Research Laboratories of Boston University and cash-shy Vectron. Inc. (electronics )—Itek began with a well-shaped organization (more than 100 scientists) that would have taken years to build. Though most of its work is classified, and identified only as "graphic retrieval,'' its stock soared from about $1.60 to $60 in a year, counting splits. Among other things, Itek (for "information technology") makes information-processing systems, works in photochemistry, electromechanics. Current sales: $30 million a year.
FARRINGTON MANUFACTURING Co..a56-year-old maker of display cases, is one of the older companies that changed course to catch the electronics boom, moved to 128. In 1929 Farrington devised the department stores' Charga-Plate, which gave it entry to two of the 1950s' hottest business areas—credit cards and automatic accounting systems. Four years ago Farrington moved into one of the highway's larg-« est plants (354,000 sq. ft.), there prints credit cards (for Hilton, 35 oil companies, all the airlines), manufactures printed circuits. It also produces a remarkable machine: an electronic scanner that reads, then transmits the information it has read onto cards or tapes that can be used by IBM machines and other automated systems. Expected sales this year: $12 million.