CORPORATIONS: Builder of the Atlas

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Imaginative Ambitions. At war's end Hopkins foresaw that the cold war was here to stay, and that the U.S. would need a new type of company to help wage it—one that turned out not just tanks, or guns, or planes, but entire weapons systems. He set out to create a General Motors of defense, visualizing it as a national service as well as a business. Using Electric Boat as his nucleus (the company had plenty of cash but few orders after 1945), he worked out a careful formula for expansion. He wanted solid, well-managed firms that could be picked up for a small amount of cash or an exchange of stock, then made into even better companies.

He made his first move in 1947. Canada's huge government-owned aircraft industry, Canadair, seemed too heavy a peacetime investment for the Canadian government, and it was shopping for a buyer. Hopkins snapped up the two plants for only $2,500,000 cash, and every year since then Canadair has returned its original purchase price in profits. Though his company was still small, Hopkins searched around for a name that would better reflect his imaginative ambitions—and settled on General Dynamics.

Hopkins next cast his eye on a company that was nearly twice as big as both Canadair and Electric Boat together: California's Consolidated Vultee Aircraft (Convair), sixth largest U.S. airframe manufacturer. Convair-had been having its ups and downs, and Owner Floyd Odium ler in developing the hydrogen bomb.

¶ Gordon Dean, 52, onetime head of the Atomic Energy Commission, now director of General Dynamics' atomic program.

¶ J. Geoffrey Notman, 56. Canadair's grizzled, square-jawed president, known as "willing horse" because of his 12-to-18 hour workday. Notman began his career as a junior engineer in Quebec, directed the production of airplanes, explosives, ships and guns for the Canadian government during the war; he was taken on as executive vice president in 1950, elected Canadair's president in 1952.

¶ Carleton Shugg. 58, stocky, pipe-puffing general manager of Electric Boat. A naval officer specializing in submarine construction before he joined Sprague Electric in 1929, Shugg managed shipyards during World War II, became deputy general manager of the Atomic Energy Commission, was hired in 1951 as the man ideally suited to run Electric Boat.

Monopoly on Brains. Under the leadership of this seasoned team. General Dynamics is heavily betting on research—or what Dr. Krafft Ehricke, Convair's astronautics expert, calls "wandering in the tomorrows"—to put it on top of the new atomic-space age. This year the company will invest $15 million in research into everything from desalting of sea water to astronautics. Though it can hope for no profit for years, it has sunk $15 million into its General Atomic Division for basic research rather than have it manufacture reactors that may soon be obsolete, thus hopes to develop better models and get a bigger market in the 1960s.