Ducommun Incorporated () is a technology-driven manufacturing company that designs, engineers and builds complex electronic systems, large contoured Aerostructures and high reliability engineered products and aftermarket services for global aerospace, defense, military and space markets.
Founded in 1849, Ducommun is recognized as the oldest continuously operating business in California and today manufactures structural and electronic components, sub-assemblies and engineered products for a wide range of commercial, military and space platforms including the Boeing 737 NG and 787 airliners, Airbus A320 and Airbus A220 airliners, Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) and F/A-18 fighter jets, C-17 heavy lift cargo jet, and the Apache, Chinook and Black Hawk helicopter platforms.
Ducommun's integrated products and solutions for U.S. and International Space programs have been featured on Mars Rovers, the International Space Station (ISS), Frontiers Mission to Jupiter, Space Shuttle Program, CASSINI, COWVR, Dream Chaser, Rosetta, Venus Express, Hubble Rescue, INMARSAT, ISS Dextre Robot, Mexsat, MILSTAR, Sentinel 6, Osiris-Rex and Europa Clipper. In 2020, Ducommun engineers built three customized Motion Control Devices called Variable Reluctance Resolvers (VRRs) for use on the Mars 2020 Mission Perseverance Rover.
Ducommun designs and manufactures complex electronic systems and sub-assemblies for advanced missile programs and platforms, and provides engineering and program management services to the United States Military, the United States Department of Homeland Security, NASA and other government agencies. Ducommun's approximately 2,500 employees work at its 16 manufacturing centers located in California, Arkansas, Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, New York, Wisconsin and Thailand. Its corporate headquarters is based in Santa Ana, California.
History
Ducommun was established in 1849 by Charles Louis Ducommun, a watchmaker by training, who emigrated to the United States from Switzerland in the early 1840s. The Company started as a general store, providing supplies and credit to gold prospectors and other pioneers who had settled in the burgeoning pueblo of Los Angeles. At the time, California was still a territory of the United States, just on the verge of statehood with the population of Los Angeles then standing at just about 1,600. The store had a public "circulating library", lending books if paid in full with a full refund upon return.
In 1857 Charles Louis Ducommun married Bertha Rontex, of San Francisco, and they had a baby girl the next year. In 1873 he was an officer of the Royal Arch Masons, Los Angeles Chapter No. 33. They built a "mansion" at 527 Lazard Street, east of Alameda Street, south of Aliso Street, and about 1875 their street was renamed "Ducommun Street". In 1892 their vacant "mansion" was donated and converted into the "News' and Working Boys' Home", a woman-run charity, formerly on First Street, which charged $1.50 per week for room, board, and laundry. In 1900, the Boy's Home moved to San Pedro Street and the mansion was donated to the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles repurposed as a "men's boarding house", called the "Bethlehem Hotel" from the Bethlehem Institutes (nearby, corner of Vignes and Ducommun Streets) under the supervision of the Rev. Dr, Dana W. Bartlett. In 1902 a new Bethlehem Men's Hotel was built on Vignes Street, and this mansion became a "Japanese lodging house."
In the 1890s he was a stockholder and member of the board of directors of Farmers and Merchants Bank of Los Angeles, of which Isaias W. Hellman was president. Ducommun kept pace with the growth of the southern California economy, and in 1907 incorporated as The Ducommun Hardware Company, evolving into a value added-distributor of metals provided by the Eastern mills. This coincided with the emergence of a defense-based industry, e.g., munitions and shipbuilding, as the country entered World War I, and during the 1920s the arrival of general aviation. Charles Albert Ducommun, one of Charles Louis Ducommun's four sons, decided early on to support an innovative aircraft designer named Donald Douglas, marking the beginning of the Company's longstanding partnership with what was to become the aerospace industry. Symbolic of this new relationship, Ducommun tubular steel flew in 1927 on the Ryan-designed Spirit of St. Louis during Charles Lindbergh's historic transatlantic flight from Long Island's Roosevelt Field to Paris.