Woodward, Inc.

Woodward's history goes back further than almost any other name in this batch. Amos Woodward started the company in 1870 in Rockford, Illinois, building speed governors for waterwheels, then moved into controls for hydro turbines and, eventually, aircraft propeller governors. That governor and controls lineage is still visible in what the company does today, even though the applications have moved from water mills to fighter jets. Woodward now organizes around two segments, Aerospace and Industrial, with aerospace representing the larger and faster-growing share of the business. The aerospace segment supplies fuel systems, actuation, sensors, and combustion controls, and the company says its components appear on nearly every major commercial and military airframe and engine program flying today.

That's a broad claim, but it reflects how deeply embedded servo valve and control technology is in modern aircraft. Woodward makes the electro-hydraulic pressure and flow control servo valves that most fly-by-wire aircraft and their engines depend on, along with fuel metering units that regulate how much fuel reaches a combustor and actuation hardware that moves control surfaces on command. On the military side, its components appear on platforms including the Lockheed Martin F-35, where Woodward supplies fuel system and actuation hardware that plugs into the aircraft's broader flight control and propulsion architecture rather than any single headline part. A dedicated Space and Defense product line sits inside the aerospace segment, reflecting programs and applications specific to government customers as distinct from the commercial aviation business that shares much of the same underlying technology. Woodward's 2018 acquisition of L'Orange, a German maker of large-engine fuel injection systems, extended that controls expertise into marine and industrial diesel and gas engines, a business adjacency that keeps the company's core competency, precise fluid and combustion control, working across sectors well outside aviation.

Woodward doesn't build engines or aircraft itself. It supplies the systems that make engines and flight controls respond precisely to commands, which means its business rises and falls with production rates across dozens of airframe and engine programs rather than any one platform's fortunes. That model has kept the company centered on fuel systems, actuation, and combustion controls for more than 150 years, with the specific hardware evolving from waterwheel governors to fly-by-wire servo valves while the underlying discipline, translating a control signal into precise mechanical or fluid response, has stayed essentially the same.