Editing Engineering Research Associates (section)

==Post-war organization==
Wenger and two members of the CSAW team, [[William Norris (CEO)|William Norris]] and [[Howard Engstrom]], started looking for investors interested in supporting the development of a new computer company. Their only real lead, at [[Kuhn, Loeb & Co.]], eventually fell through.

They then met John Parker, an investment banker who had run Northwest Aeronautical Corporation (NAC), a [[military glider|glider]] subsidiary of [[Chase Aircraft]], in [[St. Paul, Minnesota]]. NAC was in the process of shutting down as the war ended most contracts, and Parker was looking for new projects to keep the factory running. He was told nothing about the work the team would do, but after being visited by a series of increasingly high-ranking naval officers culminating with [[James Forrestal]], he knew "something" was up and decided to give it a try. Norris, Engstrom, and their group incorporated ERA in January, 1946, hired forty of their codebreaking colleagues, and moved to the NAC factory.{{sfn|Murray|1997|loc=Chapter 1}} 

During the early years, the company took on any engineering work that came their way, but were generally kept in business developing new code-breaking machines for the Navy. Most of the machines were custom-built to crack a specific code, and increasingly used magnetic [[drum memory]] to process and analyze the coded texts. To ensure secrecy, the factory was declared to be a [[United States Navy Reserve|Navy Reserve]] base, and armed guards were posted at the entrance.  ERA's numerous military and intelligence projects contributed to Minnesota's becoming "the Land of 10,000 Top-Secret Computer Projects."<ref>Kevin Dragseth, [https://www.tptoriginals.org/how-mn-became-the-land-of-10000-top-secret-computer-projects/ "How MN Became the Land of 10,000 Top-Secret Computer Projects"], TPT's 2019 documentary ''Solid State: Minnesota’s High-Tech History''</ref>