“This Grumman jet fighter is invisible. She is electrons. Yet day after day, she makes supersonic flights through an electronic sky,” according to this 1954 advertisement of the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation.

“Actually she is an electronic brain by name of REAC (Reeves Electronic Analog Computer) directed by a group of brilliant human brains.” Those are the people in the ad, no doubt. “The latter convert the mathematics of the aircraft into a language they and she understand. They “tell” her everything they know about the new fighter design through wired panels and curves wired on revolving drums.”

Grumman, founded in 1929, became a major supplier of aircraft and aircraft technology during the heydays of the Cold War. The company’s products were considered so reliable and ruggedly built that Grumman was often referred to as the “Grumman Iron Works.” The ad refers to this reliability by displaying and describing extensive testing performed “months before actual flight tests.” That, we learn, was “one reason Grumman planes are ready in quantity when needed.”

The company however was acquired by the Northrop Corporation in 1994 to form Northrop Grumman which, in 2008, was the fourth largest defense contractor in the world. A larger version of the ad is available at Infomercantile.