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Harris Corporation Marks Its 110th Anniversary


WEBWIRE

MELBOURNE, Florida, December 19, 2005 — Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS) marks its 110th anniversary on December 23, 2005. The company was founded by brothers Alfred and Charles Harris and incorporated in Niles, Ohio on December 23, 1895 as a manufacturer of automatic printing press equipment. 110 years later, Harris is an international communications and information technology company with $3 billion in annual sales serving government and commercial customers in more than 150 countries.

“Few U.S. companies today, and even fewer publicly traded companies, can stake their claim to 110 years of successful operation as a corporation. Throughout our company’s history and continuing today is a foundation of core values that helps Harris maintain an outstanding reputation with customers, employees and other stakeholders,” said Howard Lance, chairman, president and CEO. “Adherence to these values has enabled the company to adapt to changes in the marketplace, diversify into new and emerging markets, and evolve from printing to electronics to communications and information technology. This milestone anniversary is a tribute to our 13,000 global employees who continue to shape our solid reputation as a best-in-class provider of communications products, systems and services.”

The company began as the Harris Automatic Press Company in Niles, Ohio in the house in which President William McKinley had been born. During the next 30 years, Harris flourished as a leading manufacturer of printing presses and an innovator in printing technology. The company outgrew its Niles facility, moving to Cleveland in 1917. In 1926, Harris merged with the Seybold Machine Company and the Premier-Potter Company to become the Harris-Seybold-Potter Company, and was incorporated in Delaware. Over the next 30 years, the company pioneered many innovations in offset lithographic printing, and on July 13, 1955, Harris-Seybold became a public company. The company merged with Intertype Corporation, a leading provider of typesetting equipment, in 1957 to become Harris-Intertype Corporation.

As the printing industry evolved from mechanical controls and typesetting to electronics, and with electronic media presenting significant competition to newspapers and other print media, the company embarked on a diversification strategy toward electronic communications. Later in 1957, the company made the first of several acquisitions that would catapult it into the electronic age and the broadcast market by acquiring Gates Radio, a leading U.S. manufacturer of radio transmitters.

Diversification into electronics continued with the 1959 acquisition of PRD electronics, a maker of microwave testing equipment, and the 1967 merger with Melbourne, Florida-based communications equipment and electronics manufacturer Radiation, Inc. In 1969 Harris-Intertype acquired Rochester-based RF Communications, a manufacturer of single sideband and VHF radio equipment, and predecessor to the present day Harris RF Communications Division.

The company changed its name from Harris-Intertype to Harris Corporation in 1974, relocated headquarters to Melbourne, Florida in 1978, and acquired microwave equipment manufacturer Farinon Electric in 1980, predecessor to the company’s Microwave Communications Division. In 1983, the company sold its remaining printing equipment operations. In 1999, Harris became a pure-play communications company with the sale of its semiconductor operations and the spin-off of its Lanier office products business and has since focused on organic growth, acquisitions and diversification in both commercial and government communications markets. Today, the company’s operating divisions serve markets for government communications, RF communications, broadcast communications, and microwave communications.

Additional information about Harris Corporation is available at www.harris.com.



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