Former EG&G Headquarters, Massachusetts

For many years, an office on the third floor of this building in Wellesley was the official headquarters for a remarkable engineering company known as EG&G. Founded in 1931 by Doc Edgerton, the MIT professor famous for his strobe photography, and two of his former students, Kenneth Germeshausen and Herbert Grier, EG&G became deeply involved in government contracting work in 1947, by designing the timing and firing systems for the American nuclear testing program (the company was the prime contractor at the Nevada Test Site for over 40 years, well into the mid 1990s). EG&G evolved into a diversified technology company, employing over 30,000 people, with far-flung businesses that include designing automotive products and micro-technologies, and operating the nation's only chemical weapons incinerator, in Utah. The company's Special Projects division built and operated the government's secret test site in Groom Lake, Nevada, known as Area 51. Starting in the late 1990s, EG&G restructured, and became EG&G Technical Services, headquartered at Gaitherburg, Maryland, owned by the Carlyle Group. In 2002, this division was acquired by URS, the global engineering and contracting firm based in San Francisco, who were in turn acquired by AECOM in 2014. In 1999, the non-technical services division of EG&G acquired Perkin-Elmer Analytical Instruments, taking on the name of the new company: Perkin-Elmer.