The story
General Atomics was founded on July 18, 1955, in San Diego, California, by Frederic de Hoffmann with assistance from notable physicists Edward Teller and Freeman Dyson. The company was originally part of the General Atomic division of General Dynamics "for harnessing the power of nuclear technologies".
GA's first offices were in the General Dynamics facility on Hancock Street in San Diego. GA also used a schoolhouse on San Diego's Barnard Street as its temporary headquarters, which it would later "adopt" as part of its Education Outreach program. In 1956, San Diego voters approved the transfer of land to GA for permanent facilities in Torrey Pines, and the John Jay Hopkins Laboratory for Pure and Applied Science was formally dedicated there on June 25, 1959. The Torrey Pines facility serves as the company's headquarters today.
General Atomics's initial projects were the TRIGA nuclear research reactor, which was designed to be safe, and Project Orion. GA helped develop and run the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
In 1967, the company was sold to Gulf Oil and renamed "Gulf General Atomic". It was renamed "General Atomic Company" when Royal Dutch Shell Group's Scallop Nuclear Inc. became a 50–50 partner in 1973. When Gulf bought out its partner, it was renamed again to "GA Technologies Incorporated" in 1982. It was taken over by Chevron following its merger with Gulf Oil in 1984. In 1986, it was sold to a company owned by Neal Blue and Linden Blue.
In 1979, Harold Agnew was appointed president and CEO of the company.
In 1987, former US Navy Rear Admiral Thomas J. Cassidy Jr. joined the corporation. In 1993, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) was created with Neal Blue as Chairman-CEO and Thomas J. Cassidy as president. In 1994, GA-ASI spun off as an affiliate. On March 15, 2010, Rear Adm. Thomas J. Cassidy stepped down as president of GA-ASI's Aircraft Systems Group, staying on as non-executive chairman of the company's management committee. Frank Pace, the executive vice president of Aircraft Systems Group, succeeded Cassidy as President of GA-ASI.
General Atomics is also developing a Generation IV reactor design, the Gas Turbine Modular Helium Reactor (GT-MHR). In 2010, General Atomics presented a new version of the GT-MHR, the Energy Multiplier Module (EM2), which uses fast neutrons and is a Gas-cooled fast reactor.
General Atomics, including its affiliate, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, is San Diego County's largest defense contractor, according to a September 2013 report by the San Diego Military Affairs Council. The top five contractors, ranked by defense-generated revenue in fiscal year 2013, were General Atomics, followed by Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics-NASSCO, BAE Systems, and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). A separate October 2013 report by the San Diego Business Journal ranked contractors by the number of local employees. The top three contractors were General Atomics, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics-NASSCO.
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In September 2020, a $7.4 billion contract for MQ-9 Reaper drones was announced between the U.S. Air Force and General Atomics. The contract calls for the delivery of up to 36 aircraft per year.
From Wikipedia’s article on General Atomics, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4