Editing Engineering Research Associates (section)

==Legal troubles and the Remington Rand acquisition==
ERA looked to selling similar machines to a number of customers, but at about this time they became embroiled in a lengthy series of political maneuvering in Washington. [[Drew Pearson (journalist)|Drew Pearson's]] ''[[Washington Merry-Go-Round]]'' claimed that the founding of ERA was a conflict of interest for Norris and Engstrom because they had used their war-time government connections to set up a company for their own profit. The resulting legal fight left the company drained, both financially and emotionally. In 1952 they were purchased by Remington Rand, largely as a result of these problems.

Remington Rand already had a computing division however, after they had purchased the [[Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation]] in 1950. For a time the two companies operated as independent units within Remington, with ERA focusing on scientific and military customers, while Eckert–Mauchly's [[List of UNIVAC products|UNIVAC]]s were sold to business customers. However, in 1955 Remington merged with [[Sperry Corporation]] to become [[Sperry Rand]]. Both ERA and Eckert–Mauchly were folded into a single division as Sperry-UNIVAC. Much of ERA's work was dropped, while their drum technology was used in newer UNIVAC machines. A number of employees were not happy with this move and decamped to form [[Control Data Corporation]] under the leadership of Norris. Among them was [[Seymour Cray]], who went on to design [[supercomputer]]s and create [[Cray Computers]].

But the core of the ERA team lived on. Eventually they were moved to a new research division where they had considerably more freedom. They worked primarily on computing systems for military use, and they pioneered a number of early command and control and guidance systems for [[ICBM]]s and satellites. There they were known as the Military Division, which was later renamed the Aerospace Division.