Built on Thin Air

As man probes farther into airless space, he is met by an environment full of lethal radiation and extremes of temperature. For Los Angeles' Garrett Corp., the hostility of space is an industrial bonanza. Since it pressurized the cabins of World War II's high-flying B-29 bombers, Garrett has become the U.S.'s foremost specialist in keeping men alive in the yonder beyond their familiar surroundings. Garrett supplies oxygen gear for the Mercury astronauts, and is designing the breathing systems and environmental controls that will see U.S. Apollo crewmen to the moon.

In 26 years Garrett has grown from a tiny toolmaker to a muscular aerospace contractor that makes 2,000 products and last year boosted sales 8% to $206 million while profits rose a smashing 208% to $5,000,000. The proudest claim of Chairman John Clifford Garrett, 54, is that every U.S. military plane built since 1950 carries some Garrett equipment.

Defying the Experts. Cliff Garrett is a volatile, heavy-handed manager who likes to say that he built his company "on thin air." After aeronautic experts told him in the 1930s that men could never fly in the rarefied atmosphere above 12,000 ft., he profitably proved that they could--in his pressurized cabins. He also defied the medical experts who told him after a stroke three years ago that he would never walk again. Today he tramps truculently over his 20-acre plant, snapping orders and picking at details.

Starting out in 1926 as a 50-c--an-hour stockroom clerk at Lockheed Aircraft, Seattle-born Cliff Garrett soon realized that if planes were to fly faster and farther, they must also fly higher. He launched a small aircraft toolmaking company, hired engineers to experiment with pressurization. The Army Air Corps laughed off Garrett's far-out ideas. With the outbreak of World War II the chuckles turned to intense interest.

After a postwar slump, the company came back on the jet stream. It developed a turbine that uses the energy of jet exhaust to cool cockpits in the heat of supersonic speeds. Garrett now supplies pressurization or air-conditioning equipment for military bombers, fighters and commercial jetliners including the Boeing 707 and France's Caravelle. On a Government contract it is also developing a nuclear-powered system to generate electricity during long space flights.

Balancing Act. Like most aerospace companies, Garrett is struggling for less dependence on capricious Government contracting. By stretching into the production of industrial gas turbines, pneumatic valves and life vests, it has boosted its U.S. civilian and foreign sales to 38% of its total, now aims for the fifty-fifty split that the industrialists consider ideal.

Garrett is also determined that when the first permanent U.S. space station is hurled into orbit--a step beyond the Apollo--its crew will be able, with Garrett help, to live and work in "shirtsleeve comfort."

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