Jarvis history

CEC was founded in 1937 by Herbert Hoover Jr., eldest son of former United States president Herbert Hoover, as sole proprietor.

Harold Washburn was hired in 1938 as VP for Research, with a mandate to develop instruments applicable to petroleum prospecting.

CEC became a publicly held corporation in 1945, with Hoover selling all of his stock.

The Chemical Instruments Department became the Analytical and Control Division in about 1959 with Harold Wiley as General Manager.

CEC became a subsidiary of Bell & Howell in 1960.

Lawrence G. Hall carried CEC mass spectrometer know-how to CSC and led their team to put the first mass spectrometer in space on a National Aeronautics and Space Administration upper atmosphere research satellite, Explorer 17, in 1963.

In 1967, this business became Perkin-Elmer Corporation's Applied Sciences Division (ASD), located in Pomona.

In 1968 the CEC Corporation was dissolved and CEC became the Electronics Instrument Group of Bell and Howell.

ASD research instruments also flew on two Mars Viking Landers in 1976, analyzing the Martian atmosphere and searching for chemical signs of life in its soil.

ASD became Orbital Sciences Corporation's Sensor Systems Division in 1993 and developed the Major Constituent Analyzer for the International Space Station's atmosphere.