ITT in Fort Wayne — the Farnsworth succession to L3Harris

1949 (or 1951) – the line runs to L3Harris today (the Businesses section carries Capehart and Farnsworth)

The acquisition: The Farnsworth Television & Radio Corporation had opened its Fort Wayne plant in 1939 in the former Capehart building. ITT's purchase of the Farnsworth company is dated two ways in the sources, and both are stated: the Encyclopaedia Britannica's ITT history and the ACGSI place pages give 1949 — the company taken over and reorganised as Capehart-Farnsworth, producing television sets until 1965, with Philo Farnsworth himself as vice-president for research and his fusion device, the fusor, funded until 1967 — while Wikipedia's ITT company history gives 1951 for the purchase of "Philo Farnsworth's television company."

Course: The Fort Wayne operation settled into defence electronics under ITT — in ACGSI's naming, the ITT Aerospace Optical Division — building, among other work, the weather-satellite instruments that remain the site's signature product; the campus today carries a Farnsworth Innovation Center. On 31 October 2011 ITT spun off its defence business as a separate company, Exelis. Exelis's Geospatial Systems business had its facilities at Fort Wayne designing and manufacturing weather-tracking instruments, and its Night Vision & Communications Solutions business was located at Fort Wayne and Roanoke, Virginia. On 29 May 2015 Harris Corporation completed its acquisition of Exelis, for $4.75 billion. On 29 June 2019 Harris merged with L3 Technologies and the combined company took the name L3Harris. In 2019, as a condition connected with the merger, Harris sold its night-vision product line — the Roanoke line — to Elbit Systems of America for $350 million.

The Fort Wayne site today: L3Harris has built space payloads at Fort Wayne since the 1960s. In April 2025 it completed a $125 million expansion of the Fort Wayne campus, adding 95,000 square feet and capacity for up to forty-eight payloads a year, serving the Space Development Agency's Tracking Layer, the Missile Defense Agency's hypersonic tracking programme and NOAA's GeoXO weather imager.

Sources:

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica, ITT Corporation history; ACGSI Allen County place pages — the 1949 takeover and Capehart-Farnsworth. Wikipedia, "ITT Inc." — the 1951 date, stated as the conflicting account.
2. Wikipedia, "Exelis" — the 31 October 2011 spin-off and the Fort Wayne facilities. Harris Corporation acquisition reports, 2015 — the 29 May 2015 closing at $4.75 billion.
3. L3Harris merger completion, 29 June 2019; the Elbit Systems of America night-vision purchase, 2019.
4. L3Harris news release, 15–16 April 2025, and Satellite Today, 16 April 2025 — the $125 million Fort Wayne expansion and payload programmes.