Sanders Associates

Sanders Associates, Inc. was an American defense contractor based in Nashua, New Hampshire, from 1951 until it was sold in 1986. It was founded in Waltham, Massachusetts, in July 1951 by eleven engineers and scientists from Raytheon and named for Royden C. Sanders Jr., one of the original associates; it moved to Nashua in 1952, taking over a vacant mill building. It concentrated on electronic systems, notably aircraft self-protection systems and tactical surveillance and intelligence systems, and during the 1960s and 1970s it was one of the premier makers of flexible printed circuits for United States military and space programs, including the Saturn V and the Lunar Excursion Module. Lockheed bought it in 1986, and after later mergers it passed to BAE Systems in 2000. It appears in this atlas because the engineer Ralph H. Baer led the team there that developed the first home video game console, which became the Magnavox Odyssey.