Exxon Enterprises

Exxon Enterprises was formed by Exxon Corporation in 1965, as a wholly-owned subsidiary, for the purpose of diversification - creating and investing in new businesses outside the oil and gas industries. It was initially headed by Eugene ("Gene") McBrayer, President, and Hollister ("Ben") Sykes, Senior Vice President.

By 1978, Exxon's chairman, Clifton C. Garvin, had "... earmarked $1 Billion for non-oil related capital spending through 1980."

Background

After several initial efforts in commercializing non-energy-related developments from Exxon's research laboratories failed to reach commercial success, in 1968 the focus was narrowed to ten business areas which appeared to hold potential for substantial growth. However, several of those areas failed to germinate, such as factory-built housing, artificial foods, and health and medical products. As a result, the focus was further narrowed, to companies which had the potential to reach $100 million in value, within three selected market areas: New Materials; Solar Energy; and Information Processing.

By 1976, Exxon had added two existing, fully-owned companies to Exxon Enterprises: Gilbert & Barker Manufacturing, a $100 million long-term Exxon affiliate which made gas pumps and other equipment for gas stations; and Exxon Nuclear Company, which supplied nuclear fuel and other services for nuclear reactors. In addition, Exxon Enterprises had 26 other companies in various stages of development, 10 of which remained from projects started from within Exxon, and 16 of which were venture-capital-type investments in small, outside technology-based companies.

Listing of other known Exxon Enterprises investments within the three selected market areas as of 1978:

New Materials

• Emdex (silicon photodiodes)
• Optical Information Systems (Laser diodes)
• Datascreen (electronic displays)
• Graftek (graphite-fiber reinforced plastic)

Solar Energy

• Solar Power Corp (solar photovoltaic cells)
• Daystar (solar heating systems)

Information Processing

• Qwip Systems (Fax machines) - an in-house venture started in 1972.
• Vydec (word processors)
• Qume (printers)
• Qyx (microprocessor-driven electronic typewriters)
• Dialog (computerized speech recognition)
• Ramtek (interactive color graphics displays)
• Periphonics (communications interfaces)
• Delphi (automated telephone answering systems)
• Zilog (microprocessors)
• Magnex (thin-film magnetic disc drive heads)
• Scan-Tron (automatically-graded scholastic tests)