In June 1960,
Henry Singleton and
George Kozmetsky, both previously executives with
Litton Industries, formed a firm named Instrument Systems located in
Beverly Hills, California.
Arthur Rock, one of America's first and most successful venture capitalists, financed the startup with a $450,000 investment. Their basic plan was to build a major firm centering on
microelectronics and
control system development, primarily through acquiring existing companies.
Early years In October 1960, the first acquisition was made by purchasing the majority of stock in Amelco, a small electronics manufacturing plant. Within a short time, rights to the name Teledyne and its associated logo were bought. In addition to Amelco, two other electronics manufacturing firms were acquired, and by the end of 1960, Teledyne had about 400 employees and of floor space devoted to engineering development and manufacturing. Teledyne stock was first offered to the public in May 1961. During its first full fiscal year of operations ending in October 1961, Teledyne had sales of $4,491,000 with a net income of $58,000. Teledyne’s growth continued in 1962, with the acquisition of companies primarily through equity agreements. Internally, Teledyne Systems was formed as the centerpiece of the firm’s aerospace systems business, diversifying the business base into government contracts with
NASA and the
U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). By the end of the second fiscal year, Teledyne sales had increased 230 percent and net income by about 570 percent. Over the next three years, new companies were acquired in microwave and power electrical products – including the first consumer products. Teledyne Controls was established, moving the Company into the field of
hydraulics. Teledyne entered the optics field with the acquisition of Kiernan Optics, producing windows for the Apollo spacecraft and infrared optical domes for missiles. In early 1965, Teledyne had a major breakthrough in winning a large contract from the
U.S. Navy for the Integrated Helicopter Avionics System (IHAS), giving Teledyne a name in the military market. This caused a major jump in the stock price, from $15 to $65. By the end of the fiscal year, Teledyne had acquired 34 companies, sales were $86.5 million with net income of $3.4 million, there were about 5,400 employees, assets reached $66.5 million, and there were near 8 million outstanding shares of stock.
Major growth years A new era for Teledyne started in 1966. In June, Kozmetsky left to become dean of the School of Business Administration at the
University of Texas. In July, Vanadium-Alloy Steel Company (Vasco), including its subsidiary Allvac, was merged into Teledyne. This expanded the company into the Eastern U.S. and started the formation of material technologies as a major business activity of Teledyne. With the merger, Singleton turned his position of president over to
George A. Roberts, a close friend from Naval Academy days, who had headed Vasco. Singleton, now assisted by Roberts, continued in acquiring new companies. In 1967, one of the largest of these was Brown Engineering, a firm with about 3,500 employees headquartered in
Huntsville, Alabama. With NASA and DoD contracts for engineering services and research, Brown Engineering added a new line of business for Teledyne.
Ryan Aeronautical in San Diego, was acquired in 1968.
Continental Motors was primarily owned by Ryan, and this acquisition brought Teledyne into the piston-powered engine business with both commercial and military customers. In the remainder of the 1960s, Teledyne acquired some 90 more companies. A number of these businesses were in consumer products, such as Water Pik,
Acoustic Research with high-fidelity speakers, and Olson Electronics, a mail order retailer founded in 1927, in Akron, Ohio, as Olson Co., by Irving, later including brothers, Sidney and Philip, that operated retail stores across America.
Packard Bell Corporation had both consumer and government sales in computers and television receivers. A number of electronic product lines and smaller acquisitions were consolidated in Teledyne Electronics and Teledyne Microelectronic Technologies. Two acquired firms,
Geophysical Exploration and
Geotronics, brought Teledyne into off-shore drilling and earth-science instrumentation fields. Twenty-one acquired companies were in the metals business, including
Wah Chang Corporation and
Cast Products, and this led to the acquisition of firms producing industrial machines and machine tools. Other diverse acquisitions included Monarch Rubber, Sewart Seacraft, Isotopes, Radar Relays, Getz Dental, and the agreement with Subaru to market Wisconsin engines. Singleton also added a diverse group of financial institutions, giving Teledyne contact and intimacy with the capital world. These included thrift and loan banks and insurance firms dealing with property, workers compensation, casualty, and life insurance. Most of the insurance investments were later consolidated into the Argonaut and
Unitrin subsidiaries, and were ultimately spun off as independent companies. Teledyne was divided into groups, and by the end of the 1960s, there were 16 groups with 94 profit centers in 120 locations. Company presidents were given considerable freedom in their operations, but corporate maintained close financial control and capital management. Teledyne sales in 1969 were $2.7 billion and net income was $372 million. The stock had a 2-for-1 split during 1967 and the same split in 1969. As Teledyne moved into its second decade, some 150 firms had been acquired. Singleton then essentially stopped direct acquisition of companies and began investments in stock of technical firms. By the end of the second decade, Teledyne owned 31 percent of
Curtiss-Wright, 24 percent of Litton, as well as significant portions of a number of other well-known companies. This stock was mainly held by the insurance subsidiaries. During the recession of the early 1970s, Teledyne stock fell from about $40 to less than $8; Singleton saw this as an opportunity to buy back Teledyne stock. In buybacks from October 1972 to February 1976, 22 million shares were repurchased at $14 to $40 – well above the market price. This raised the value of Teledyne stock, eventually increasing to near $175 at the end of the decade. In this period, annual income increased by 89 percent and net income by 315 percent. Stockholders who had remained through the buyback achieved a phenomenal gain of about 3,000 percent.
Peak and decline Going into its third decade, Teledyne sales passed the $3 billion mark in 1980, with industrial products leading in both sales and net income. In the race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, government sales reached almost $800 million. The first significant slump in Teledyne business began in 1985. Sales for 1984 had been about $3.49 billion, but decreased to around $3.26 billion the next year and remained essentially flat for the remainder of the decade. In April 1986, Singleton, who was then 69 years old, turned the position of CEO over to Roberts, but remained as Board Chairman. During 1988, Teledyne faced a number of legal problems, none of which were the direct result of wrongdoings of Singleton or Roberts. After agreeing to plead guilty to officials in Teledyne Electronics having made false statements, Teledyne was fined $17.5 million. After guiding Teledyne for 29 years, Singleton retired as an employee and officer in April 1989. Nevertheless, that was a peak year for Teledyne sales ($3.53 billion) and earnings ($392 million). Teledyne stock price reached $388.88. Total employment also peaked at near 43,000. Henry Singleton retired as Teledyne Chairman in 1991, and was replaced by George Roberts;
William P. Rutledge was named president and CEO. Roberts then retired in 1993 and was replaced by Rutledge;
Donald B. Rice, previously Secretary of the U.S. Air Force, was then named president and CEO. Many companies had been sold during the prior several years, and in 1993, through consolidations, the number was further reduced from 65 to 18. In January 1995, Teledyne Electronic Systems was sold to Litton Industries, essentially ending the business on which Teledyne had originally been formed. In the early 1990s, while the company underwent these turnovers in leadership, two lawsuits were brought against Teledyne by whistleblowers under the False Claims Act. The suits charged the company with falsifying test reports for relay devices sold to the US government for weapons and spacecraft use, and with padding government contract cost estimates. In April 1994, Teledyne settled both cases for $112.5 million, at the time one of the largest settlements by military contractors in a
qui tam case. The renewed Teledyne operated in much the same manner as Singleton’s early Teledyne, functioning as a conglomerate with growth mainly due to acquisitions. In 2010, the sales were $1,644.2 million with net income of $120.5 million, a cumulative financial growth in the decade of approximately 100 percent. About 44 percent of the 2010 sales were derived from contracts with agencies of, or prime contractors to, the U.S. government. On 4 January 2021, it was announced Teledyne Technologies would acquire
FLIR Systems for $8 billion. In 2021,
Teledyne MEMS, which is in part composed by
Teledyne DALSA, was ranked second in global revenues in the
MEMS field. In October 2023, Teledyne Technologies acquired Xena Networks, a high-speed terabit Ethernet validation, assurance, and production test solutions provider. Teledyne Technologies was
sanctioned by the Chinese government on December 5, 2024 for what it said was the company's role in selling arms to Taiwan. The New York Times called the sanction largely symbolic as "U.S. companies that make armaments are already largely barred from doing business in China by U.S.-imposed restrictions." In January 2026, it was announced Teledyne Technologies had acquired DD-Scientific Holdings Limited and its subsidiary DD-Scientific Limited, a
Fareham, United Kingdom–based manufacturer of gas sensors. The acquisition added electrochemical and trace gas sensor technologies to Teledyne’s environmental and industrial instrumentation businesses, with financial terms not disclosed. ==References==