Simon Ramo and Dean Everett Wooldridge

Although sources cite the year 1901 as the founding date of TRW, this number is linked to the predecessor company of the "Thompson Products Company". Thompson Products only became part of TRW after it was founded in 1958. Behind "TRW" are above all the names of two visionary U.S. entrepreneurs Simon Ramo and Dean Everett Wooldridge. The two founded the technology company "Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation" in 1953. From the very beginning, the Thompson Products Company was involved as a financier. The merger with Thompson in 1958 created "Thompson Ramo Wooldridge", primarily a defense and aerospace company with an automotive branch. It was not until 1965 that the abbreviation "TRW, Inc." became the official company name.

The beginnings of TRW

After World War II, in times of the beginning of the Cold War, Ramo and Wooldridge worked in the U.S. defense industry at Hughes Electronics, the company of the eccentric Howard Hughes. Both physicists, who have a doctorate, already knew each other from their time at the California Institute of Technology. Just days after they left Hughes Electronics together in 1953, they formed the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation. On the day of its founding, the U.S. Air Force sought contact with the two electronics specialists. It was about nothing less than the development of U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles to counter the Russian threat of the atomic bomb.

In 1958, Thompson merged with the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation to form Thompson Ramo Wooldridge. Wooldridge became its president, Ramo served as executive director, focusing on technology development. While Ramo is described as flamboyant and impulsive, Wooldridge looked and behaved calm and level-headed like a professor in gold-rimmed glasses.

The rise

The following eventful decades of TRW were characterized by strong growth and many acquisitions. In 1997, the defense, aerospace and electronics group TRW expanded its automotive business, among other things by purchasing the "Airbag and Steering Wheel Systems" division of Magna International, which resulted in the birth of "TRW Airbag Systems" and the entry into the occupant protection systems business. In May 1999, TRW took over the British automotive supplier "LucasVarity plc" for seven billion U.S. dollars. Three years later, in 2002, "TRW Automotive" was created through a spin-off and sale from "TRW, Inc." to the financial investor "Blackstone Group". In 2004, "TRW Automotive" went public on the New York Stock Exchange. In September 2014, the specialist for brakes, electronics and active and passive vehicle safety accepted ZF's takeover offer. On May 15, 2015, ZF finally integrated the U.S. company into the ZF Group as the "Active and Passive Safety Technology" division.