The Blue Chair Chronicles - Season 01 Ep. 01

In the first episode of The Blue Chair Chronicles, Cubic Defense Applications' vice president of advanced programs describes origins of Cubic Corporation. 

Founded by Walter J. Zable, Cubic began life as a small electronics company in a San Diego storefront in 1951.

(Script):

(0:02) I came to Cubic in 1964, I walked in the door the first time as a starving college student looking for a job for the summer, Cubic hired me as a quality control inspector and that lead to a 45 year career.
 
(0:22) I’m vice president of advanced programs for Cubic Defense.

(0:26) Cubic got started with the dream of Walt Zable. He wanted to bid a new program that his employer at the time didn’t. He took a brave step of leaving that employer, starting Cubic in a garage, bid the program and won it. So, everything that Cubic is today began with this single device, a calorimetric watt meter or a watt meter that measures precise microwave power better than anyone else in those days could do it.

(0:52) Where did the name Cubic come from? I was able to ask Walter C. Zable one time how his dad picked that name.  He wanted a name that had some engineering and precision connotations and picked Cubic as a generic name.

(1:05) Innovation is a part of Cubic’s growth, it’s been with the company since its very beginning. Many of the things we’ve done were innovating ideas, putting microprocessors in elevator controls when nobody else did it, precision tracking for air combat.

(1:18) There’s many many examples, Walt was a very experimental and brilliant guy and he set the culture of the company in the direction of constant innovation. Cubic applied innovations that let us do the job better than the competition.

(1:32) Cubic is most recognized for our live training instrumentation. It starts with air combat training and ground combat training. Those tools actually let the warfighters go to battle ten times, survive and learn their skills before they go into real combat.

(1:46) Studies have shown that if you can win the first ten battles, you become almost undefeatable. That’s the advantage that Cubic provides.