page_title: Mitre Corporation
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Mitre Corporation / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The MITRE Center at Mitre Corporation's campus in Bedford.
context_page_description: The Mitre Corporation is an American not-for-profit organization based in Bedford, Massachusetts, and McLean, Virginia. It manages federally funded research and development centers supporting several U.S. government agencies.
context_section_description: Under the leadership of Clair W. "Hap" Halligan, Mitre was formed in 1958 to provide overall direction to the companies and workers involved in the U.S. Air Force SAGE project. Although one may think the name is an acronym for "MIT Research Establishment", the company attributes the name to James McCormack, a member of Mitre's first Board of Trustees: "McCormack helped draft the charter and incorporate The MITRE Corporation in July 1958. He wanted a name that was meaningless and without connotations, but with an attractive feel. Some people thought the word MITRE was based on the word for joining or fitting together. Others believed the name came from combining industry names or keywords. McCormack, however, denied all of these explanations."
  Most of the early employees were transferred to Mitre from the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where SAGE was being developed. In April 1959, a site was purchased in Bedford, Massachusetts, near Hanscom Air Force Base, to develop a new Mitre laboratory, which Mitre occupied in September 1959.
  After the SAGE project ended in the early 1960s, the FAA selected Mitre to develop a similar system to provide automated air traffic control. The project resulted in the formation of the National Airspace System (NAS), that is still in use today. To support the NAS project and continual operations with the U.S. Department of Defense at the Pentagon, Mitre opened a second "main office" in McLean, Virginia.
  Through the 1960s, Mitre developed and supported military Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence (C³I) projects, including the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS). Mitre also worked on a number of projects with ARPA, including precursors to the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). Since the 1960s, Mitre has developed or supported most DoD early warning and communications projects, including the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) and the Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS).
  In 1982, Mitre authored a proposal for the State Department called "Cannabis Eradication in Foreign Western Nations." In this proposal, a plan was outlined to eradicate cannabis in participating nations within 121 days, for $19 million. The report discussed the use and safety considerations of paraquat. The plan would have been to aerially dispense paraquat over marijuana crops. One safety concern was the food crops grown alongside the marijuana crops being contaminated. A study conducted on rats by Imperial Chemical Industries was cited in the report, and claimed low health risks for paraquat. The U.S. Public Health Service commented on this study saying that due to the present squamous metaplasia in the respiratory tracts of the rats that "This study should not be used to calculate the safe inhalation dose of paraquat in humans."
  During the 1980s, the German hacker Markus Hess used an unsecured Mitre Tymnet connection as an entry point for intrusions into U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and NASA computer networks.
  On July 10, 1985, mitre.org was the first .org domain name registered, and it remains in use by the company today.
  On January 29, 1996, Mitre divided into two entities: The MITRE Corporation, to focus on its FFRDCs for DoD and FAA; and a new company, originally named Mitretek Systems and now called Noblis, to assume non-FFRDC work for other U.S. Government agencies.
  In 2005, a team from Mitre competed in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, and qualified in 23rd place for the final race.
caption: The Mitre Center at Mitre's campus in Bedford
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