Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/812736
186 NE W HAMPSHIRE: First in the Nation • Profiles in Excellence M uch like the Granite State itself, BAE Systems was born from humble beginnings, with 200 employees in a rented section of a former textile mill in downtown Nashua. Now, more than 60 years later, it is one of the largest employers in New Hampshire – with four major locations in the state – and one of the U.S. Defense Department's most-trusted suppliers of life- saving equipment for the nation's soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen. In 1951, when Royden Sanders founded the technology firm, then known as "Sanders Associates," the goal was simple: base a company around "really good engineering." In the six decades that followed, the ingenuity of the employees and their innovative solutions save servicemen and women's lives every day. Its 4,500 New Hampshire employees are driven by its mission, "We Protect ose Who Protect Us®," while also inspiring America's next generation of engineers through its community outreach programs. BAE Systems' defense and commercial electronics are used everywhere from major U.S. metropolitan areas to Afghanistan to Earth's orbit and even on Mars, and the company has time and again been lauded with ushering in the age of high technology into New Hampshire. From its earliest days the company has solved some of the most complex engineering problems – filing one hundred new patents in its first decade alone. One special patent stemmed from Ralph Baer, a German born immigrant who fled with his family to the United States before the outbreak of World War II. Baer, who eventually settled in Manchester, NH, and a small group of engineers, came up with the idea of playing computer programs on television screens that would later become the very first video game and change popular culture forever. First demonstrated with a game called Pong, the invention earned him the title "father of the video game industry." His patent was granted in 1972 and soon the technology was licensed to Magnavox. Aer retirement, Baer went on to develop the technology for the popular memory game Simon and the '80s interactive phenomenon Teddy Ruxpin. Another patent – PANAR – enabled radar to track multiple targets simultaneously and is still the basis of radar defense and surveillance systems today. e company soon became the first non-military site to have a special security area – a major achievement – that opened up a whole new field of research analyzing top secret communications signals. When Royden Sanders founded the technology firm in 1951, then known as Sanders Associates, the goal was simple: base a company around 'really good engineering.' BAE Systems