From Jets To Jettas

Systron Donner Automotive Traces Roots to
Aerospace and Defense Industries

June 12, 2007

CONCORD, Calif. – The story of Systron Donner Automotive represents a synergy of science and entrepreneurship, combining to create a technology that is saving countless lives every day. The company’s signature product, the quartz MEMS gyro, forms the heart of active safety systems in more than 40 million vehicles (and counting) on the world’s roads today.

The Donner Scientific Company was founded by William K. Rosenberry in Berkeley, Calif. in 1953 in order to serve the then-burgeoning aerospace industry. Growing quickly with the success of its inertial test products for systems such as the F-4 Phantom fighter and the Atlas rocket, the company merged with the Systron Corporation in 1960. Systron Donner’s new products found their way into such storied vehicles as the X-15 rocket plane, the Mercury capsule that carried astronaut John Glenn into orbit and the Apollo 11 rocket to the moon.

Systron Donner continued to grow, with different parent companies taking ownership of it throughout the years, as its technology was incorporated into systems such as the F-16 fighter, various missile programs, and NASA’s Landsat and GOES satellites.

It was the end of the Cold War which precipitated the most momentous shift in the company’s history and presaged the “Automotive” addition to its name. With defense budgets dwindling and electronic technology promising benefits unimagined by its mechanical forebears, Systron Donner, in 1985, undertook a bold initiative to leverage both of these incipient trends. The company’s next innovation would find its inspiration in the quartz tuning fork used in watch crystals. Under the leadership of Chief Scientist Harold Morris, Systron Donner labored for five years to create a solid-state angular-rate sensor: the Quartz Rate Sensor (QRS) which utilized a unique double-ended tuning fork design. The QRS was the original iteration of today’s MicroGyro™.

The MicroGyro is revolutionary. Utilizing a smaller, more refined version of the QRS tuning fork machined at the microscopic level, it can sense an astonishing range of angular-rate changes in a cost-effective and compact unit. Although a predecessor of the MicroGyro helped the Pathfinder rover find its way around Mars, it was its introduction into automotive safety systems which fundamentally transformed the company.

In 1997, Cadillac introduced StabiliTrak, its trade name for what is now commonly known as ESC, or electronic stability control. Systron Donner Automotive’s angular-rate sensor helped to make StabiliTrak (and thus ESC) a reality, and helped the company transition from dwindling defense products to a booming automotive market serving OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers alike. Two years after Cadillac, the inertial technology had found its way into 15 automotive brands. Today, with ESC mandated by the U.S. government in all vehicles by 2012, Systron Donner Automotive’s prospects are impressive.

With more than 600 employees at its 100,000 square-foot headquarters, over 50 years of inertial sensing experience and dozens of patents to its credit, Systron Donner Automotive is dominating the automotive active-safety systems markets. With new technologies on the horizon, the company is poised to expand into other markets as its pioneering technology, state-of-the-art manufacturing and superlative customer support make possible.

About Systron Donner Automotive

Systron Donner Automotive is the global leader in the design and manufacture of the highest performing inertial measurement products integral to advanced automotive safety applications. Installed in more than 40 million automobiles on the road today, the Systron Donner Automotive quartz MEMS gyro is the enabling technology behind the industry’s most reliable active safety systems. Systron Donner Automotive is now applying this same technology to the marine and off-highway markets, advancing the quality of vehicle safety beyond the automotive industry.

For more information about Systron Donner Automotive, a Custom Sensors & Technologies company, call (925) 682-6161 or visit www.systronauto.com.

About Custom Sensors & Technologies

Headquartered in Moorpark, Calif., Custom Sensors & Technologies (CST) is a business unit of Schneider Electric. CST was formed from the combination of Kavlico, Crouzet, Crydom and former divisions of BEI Technologies. CST provides sensors, controls and actuation products to the industrial, transportation, and military and aerospace markets. www.cst.schneider-electric.com

About Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric is the world’s power and control specialist. Through its world-class brands, Merlin Gerin, Square D and Telemecanique, Schneider Electric anticipates and satisfies its customers’ requirements in the residential, building, industry and energy and infrastructure markets. With 105,000 employees and operations in 190 countries, Schneider Electric generated sales of €13.7 billion in 2006 through 15,000 sales outlets. www.schneider-electric.com.

Schneider Electric – Giving the best of the New Electric World To everyone, everywhere, at any time.

For more information or to arrange an interview with a Systron Donner Automotive executive, please contact Merlot Marketing, Inc. at (916) 285-9835.

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