The company was founded by Paul V. Galvin as the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in Chicago, Illinois, in 1928. The name of the company was changed to Motorola, Inc., in 1947. The decade of the 1940s also saw the company begin government work and open a research laboratory in Phoenix, Arizona, to explore solid-state electronics. By the time of Paul Galvin’s death in 1959, Motorola was a leader in military, space and commercial communications, had built its first semiconductor facility and was a growing manufacturer of consumer electronics. Motorola is still in business today and is a leader in technology.