A Chelmsford-based maker of imaging sensors, microwave devices and space-grade electronics, whose sensors have flown on the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gaia and New Horizons missions.
Teledyne e2v designs and makes imaging sensors, microwave devices, thyratrons (special electronic switches) and microprocessors for healthcare, space, defence and industry. A charge-coupled device, or CCD, is a light-sensitive chip like the sensor in a camera, and e2v's CCDs have been used in the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. For the European Space Agency's Gaia mission in 2013 it supplied an array of about one billion pixels, described as the largest image sensor flown into space, and its CCDs took the images of Pluto in 2015 and Arrokoth in 2019 for NASA's New Horizons probe.
The company's roots go back to the early 1940s, when part of the Marconi group in Chelmsford made magnetrons for radar. It became the English Electric Valve Company, then e2v. After Marconi's collapse, a management buy-out in 2002, led by Keith Attwood and backed by 3i, was followed by a stock market listing in 2004. In March 2017 the US group Teledyne Technologies bought e2v and renamed it Teledyne e2v. The business continues to work as a UK site and uses the e2v name within the Teledyne group. The 2020 anniversary release on the invention of the CCD in 1969 says the Chelmsford fabrication facility is central to future space science and that the company intends to remain a long-term supplier to space agencies.
We did not find a mission statement, but the company's own words show its attitude to its work: it describes its CCD fabrication site as critical to future space science missions, and says it wants to be a long-term supplier to major space agencies and instrument makers. In a 2020 release, Dr Miles Adcock reflected on how the invention of the CCD 50 years earlier led to much of today's imaging. That is the company talking about itself rather than an independent view.
Teledyne e2v is headquartered in Chelmsford, Essex, which is both a design, development and manufacturing site and the Northern European regional sales office. A second UK site at Lincoln specialises in microwave electronics, where a microwave engineering centre opened in 2010. A Wikipedia profile gives about 1,600 staff with over 30% engineers or scientists, but this relates to the period around 2016, before the Teledyne purchase, so it is dated.
A company like this employs physicists, electronic and microwave engineers, process and cleanroom technicians, test engineers, software developers, quality and supply chain staff, and people in sales and project management. Because the products go into telescopes, medical scanners and defence systems, much of the work is about precision and reliability. Chelmsford has a long engineering tradition, and Teledyne e2v is a good example of how a local firm can supply parts for global science projects. Check Teledyne e2v's site for current roles.
Website: www.teledyne-e2v.com
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