Word: thorntons
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Battle for Funds. Stocky, handsome Tex Thornton, who was born in Knox County, Texas and graduated from Texas Technological College ('37), got a backhanded boost toward success from eccentric, erratic Howard Hughes. Thornton quit Hughes Aircraft in the same big blowup of Hughesmen (TIME, Oct. 5, 1953) that sent Simon Ramo and Dean Wooldridge off to start their own famed Ramo-Wooldridge Corp. With Thornton went Roy L. Ash, Hughes Aircraft's assistant controller and now Litton...
Looking for an angel to back them in starting a new company, Thornton went to Wall Street's Lehman Bros. Lehman
Partner Paul Mazur argued that Thornton was just another eggheaded visionary, said that any loan to him would go down the drain. But other Lehman partners, impressed by Thornton's job at Hughes, raised $1,500,000 in an unusual financing deal. Each investor was required to buy at least $29,200 in bonds and stocks. Each $29,200 package is now worth $522,760, and Mazur happily admits: "I was wrong. Thornton delivered far better than he talked...
Battle for Brains. With Lehman-raised cash, Thornton and associates bought Litton, then a small microwave-tube outfit that had supplied Hughes with its best magnetrons, i.e., vacuum tubes that emit radar impulses. During the next 15 months, Litton used stock and cash to pick up half a dozen little-known firms making computers, printed circuits, servomechanisms, communications and navigation equipment. When Litton bought Digital Controls Systems Inc. in 1954, it also got brilliant Research Scientist George Steele; Steele heads Litton's work on lightweight computers that make up to 15,000 calculations per second for a plane...
Battle for Survival. So fast did Thornton collect companies that many a competitor called Litton a house of cards, figured it would collapse under the blow of the recession. Yet Litton kept right on expanding. Early this year Litton merged with New Jersey's Monroe Calculating Machine Co. (sales: $40 million) because