There was a time when West Windsor and Plainsboro were places where businesses with a serious base in scientific, engineering, and other highly technical fields predominated. Some of the old-timers are still here, but in recent decades the landscape has changed, and today the local professional business spectrum includes numerous other fields.
When I joined my “career” company in 1957 — where I would work for 40 years — there were probably at least a dozen other companies in either research and development, high-tech manufacturing, or pure research. Understandably, many of these companies were close to Route 1 or Princeton Junction and its easy access to the train. More importantly they were near the scientific research resources to be found at Princeton University. Indeed, a number of them were started by Princeton degree holders. Some remained as small companies, consisting of a single individual. Others expanded and eventually gained many employees.
As far as I know, the first research center to be built in this area that was independent of the university was the RCA (Radio Corporation of America) research center on Route 1. Later RCA became known as the Sarnoff Corporation, after its long-time president David Sarnoff. It is now a subsidiary of SRI International. The original lab was built starting in 1941. It was deeply involved in a number of pioneering products in the communications and entertainment industries, and its main claim to fame — and most publicly recognized — was the final development of the first practical system of transmitting and receiving television broadcasts in color.
Some of the other companies were (and still are, in some cases):
Princeton Aerochem Research: A small company that flourished in the area during the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. It was primarily engaged in research in the chemistry and dynamics of flames. It had an office in Plainsboro and later in Princeton Junction.
Schlumberger (once the Applied Science Corporation of Princeton: ASCOP): Research and products applied to the oil and gas industries.
McClain Engineering (Zero Corporation): This was one of the few companies in West Windsor that actually manufactured a product. Located on Washington Road near where it crosses Little Bear Brook, it was in the business of designing and making cooling fans for electronic equipment.
It started in the 1950s before the days of the transistor when practically all electronic equipment used vacuum tubes in the circuits. These tubes generated a lot of heat which, if it was not blown away by a fan, would seriously damage the equipment and make it useless. This was a serious problem not only for military and airborne equipment, but also for some items used around the house, such as radios and television sets.
On one occasion McClain pitched in to help the newly opened WW-P High School with a “furniture” problem that had nothing to do with cooling. Soon after the school opened in 1975 we (the school board) became aware that some of the new pedestal-type tables in the commons areas were very easily damaged. It seems that if a student sat on the edge of one in a certain way, his weight would cause the top to break loose from the metal pedestal in the center causing the top to tip and the student to fall on the floor. It’s all very well to tell students not to sit on the tables, but that is a hard thing to enforce. Replacing the tables with ones of a different design was also a “big deal,” especially in a timely manner and at reasonable cost.
As an engineer as well as school board member at the time, I decided on a “quick fix,” which turned out to work for a long time — in fact, until the tables needed replacing for other reasons. I went to McClain next door and asked a friend there if they would make a batch of simple sheet metal brace structures that I designed that could be screwed to the bottom of the tables so as to brace their pedestals. The braces were made as a “donation” to the school system and were screwed to the tables by school custodians. They worked very well and lasted as long as we needed them.
Another interesting operation in the area was the Industrial Reactor Laboratories (IRL) in Plainsboro. It was located just off Schalks Crossing Road a bit before it goes over the railroad main line. (The local Plainsboro railroad station was once nearby.) The laboratory facility’s five megawatt nuclear reactor was the site of research on radioactive isotopes for a number of years, beginning in 1958. It was operated by both Columbia and Rutgers universities at different times and was finally decommissioned in 1977 after much discussion about a possible radioactive water spill at the site. The site was finally decontaminated, and the main office building there has been in use by several small companies for many years.
The American Cyanamid site on Clarksville Road, and its new owner Howard Hughes, have been the subject of much speculation and discussion in recent times, so it is sufficient only to mention that Cyanamid’s research fit in very well with the research and development slant of much of the area’s commercial interests.
The small research company that was always of the most interest to me was the one where I worked for 40 years, beginning in 1957. It was called Aeronautical Research Associates of Princeton (A.R.A.P.). It was founded by a Princeton graduate student in 1954.
His first office was on Nassau Street in Princeton, near what is now a bicycle dealership. In 1957 he had his own building built at 50 Washington Road, the same building that has been the headquarters of Congressman Rush Holt for the past 14 years.
When we first moved into the building just after it was built in 1957 my family and I were about to move to our first, and only, house in Grovers Mill, just one mile away. At the time, the A.R.A.P. building was only what today is the front part, closest to the road. The other portions of the building, including the laboratory at the back, were built over a period of about 15 years.
The company retained its status as a research consulting operation until the late ’90s, when it became a portion of the Titan Corporation of California. For about its last three or four years, it shared the building with a couple of smaller independent technical consulting companies and finally occupied offices on Roszel Road. It was also a neighbor of Mathematica.
At its largest A.R.A.P. had more than 50 employees. At that time —around 1980 — we had to rent additional space across the railroad tracks in the building currently occupied by Coldwell Banker Real Estate. During the 40 years I worked there my primary interest was experimental fluid dynamics. Our customers were from both industry and the U.S. government, mainly the Defense Department — remember, much research of many types in those days was spurred by the “cold war” with the Soviet Union. But we also did consulting work for General Electric and other private companies.
As an experimental specialist my job was to design and execute experiments to verify analytical results found by the theorists. The analysis of fluid dynamics problems is among the most difficult disciplines, and experimental verification is often just as difficult. Two areas in which we were quite active were the problem of the wakes behind large aircraft and the performance of cooling systems in nuclear power plants.
As an airplane flies through the air, its wings shed what is called a vortex wake. This flow can persist in the air behind the airplane for a long time, sometimes long enough for another airplane to fly into it. If another airplane does encounter it, serious damage can be done, including loss of its lift and resulting flight conditions that can’t be controlled by the pilot. These days that is rarely a problem, but at one time it was considered a serious one, especially when the airliners kept getting bigger. A.R.A.P. made important contributions to helping understand and control the problem.
At one time — decades ago — it was realized that the cooling systems of some nuclear power plants were not as efficient as they could be. A.R.A.P. did important research toward understanding the problem and determining ways to improve that efficiency.
Over all, West Windsor and Plainsboro have been very active and productive in the business of basic research.
