FREDERICA, Del.- ILC Dover near Frederica may be known for its space suit technology but company leaders say the engineering firm has been focused on a number of different areas over the last seven decades.
The company, a spinoff of International Latex Corporation in 1947, celebrated its 70th anniversary on Tuesday, marking the firm's journey from working with the military on rafts, to developing space suits with NASA, and now producing flood control technology aimed at saving lives in the event of terrorist attacks or natural disasters.
"The work on flight suits led us to working with NASA on early space suit technology, which eventually lead to the Apollo work," said Fran DiNuzzo, the company's CEO and President.
The company was once located in Dover but re-located to the Frederica area during a time of transition. The firm now employs about 350 workers at its headquarters in Frederica, where it also developed its "Resilient Tunnel Plug" technology that can inflate in 15 minutes to prevent a subway tunnel from collapsing and holding back thousands of pounds of water.
Sid Williams, a longtime employee who retired from ILC Dover, said watching astronauts land on the moon in 1969 using suits the company developed was a "marvelous" moment.
"I just couldn't believe that we were part of it," he said. "It was great."
