The Time Woburn Entered The Space Race

WOBURN, MA — When NASA said in 1963 in planned to locate a new Electronics Research Center somewhere in the greater Boston area, Woburn officials were quick to act. By Jan. 17, 1963, the Mayor and the District Secretary to Senator Edward M. Kennedy “to use their prestige and friendship with the President and Senator to decide favorably to locate the $6,500,000 space project here." That resolution set off months of politicking by city officials, only to lose out to Kendall Square in Cambridge.

The City of Woburn posted a timeline of Woburn's near-miss at a role in the space race on its Website to mark the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. While the center was only open from 1964 to 1970, it employed 1,600 people working in 10 different labs at its peak and developed the space agency's in-house expertise in electronics during the Apollo era.

NASA chose Kendall Square because the location "allowed it to take advantage of the close proximity to MIT and (to a lesser extent) Harvard, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory, and the electronics industry located along Route 128," according to a history of the ERC on NASA's Website.

"Researchers investigated such areas as microwave and laser communications; the miniaturization and radiation resistance of electronic components; guidance and control systems; photovoltaic energy conversion; information display devices; instrumentation; and computers and data processing," NASA's history says.

For Kennedy, the center was part of the campaign promise to "do more for Massachusetts" in his first successful run for Senate. President Kennedy belatedly put the center into the budget, setting off a backlash from Congressmen from the Midwest, who felt "swindled out of the NASA largesse."

"The location of the facility was at the center of a political tug of war as to what part of the country, let alone what part of the Commonwealth, the center would locate," Woburn said in the timeline posted this week, which includes photos of letters Sen. Kennedy sent to city officials. "But the local business and government leaders made their case for Woburn. It bound them together in a common mission to promote all the benefits of the city and to join in the larger mission of reaching the moon."