--- alias: - Varo Manufacturing Company - Varo Manufacturing Co. - Varo Mfg. Co. - Varo, Inc. - Varo Inc. - Varo category: Private Companies created: 2026-10-02 location: Garland, Texas relations: - fn: 1 role: described by Barker as a government contractor; its Military Assistance Division retyped the annotated Jessup paperback for a limited edition (the Varo Edition introduction dates the work to 1955; Barker places the ONR routing in 1956) start: 1955 type: contractor_to with: '[[Office of Naval Research]]' summary: Garland, Texas electronics manufacturer for the military whose Military Assistance Division retyped an annotated copy of M. K. Jessup's The Case for the UFO after it reached Office of Naval Research officers. tags: - Organization - DefenseContractor - Electronics - NightVision - Garland - Texas - UFO - VaroEdition updated: 2026-10-03 --- Varo Manufacturing Company, later Varo, Inc., was an electronics maker in Garland, Texas, that supplied equipment to the U.S. military.[^1][^2] The introduction to the Annotated Edition of [Morris K. Jessup](/people/morris-k-jessup/)'s The Case for the UFO names it as the firm that offered to republish the annotated paperback "in a very limited edition as a prelude to consideration of further pursuit of this unconventional material."[^1] ### The Annotated Edition The unsigned introduction to the Annotated Edition states that "Varo Mfg. Co., Garland, Texas, offered to re-publish the book together with all notations," after the annotated copy had reached the [Office of Naval Research](/organizations/office-of-naval-research/) (ONR) and had drawn "direct interest" from Captain Sidney Sherby and Commander George W. Hoover, Special Projects Officer at ONR. It names Miss Michael Ann Dunn as the person who "has undertaken the task of rewriting this book including all notes, interjections, underscoring, and etc.," retaining by form, position, color and footnotes as much of the relationships of the annotated copy as possible, and states that no attempt was made to read crossed-out material with ultraviolet light.[^1] Gray Barker wrote in 1973 that Varo was at that time "deeply involved in aero-space design and manufacturing for the military," that one division was called "Military Assistance," which "may have coordinated the firm's activities with the government," that the division "agreed to run off a limited number of copies," and that Dunn was personal secretary to the company's president, "a Mr. Stanton." He wrote that Varo said its personnel records failed to find a record of her employment. Barker stated the book was "evidently taken to the Varo firm by Sherby, possibly in conjunction with Hoover," and he named two theories: that senior officers passed the matter down through lower officers so that Varo would print it without publicity, or that lower-ranking officers such as Sherby asked for the reprint as a personal favor. He gave the second as "the writer's best guess," and wrote that Jessup was called in by Varo, shown the book, and given several copies. He described a spiral bound volume of more than 200 pages, each page passed twice through an office duplicator, black ink for the original text and red for the annotations. The number of copies is not stated in his preface.[^2] The two accounts differ on the date. The introduction places the envelope's postmark in 1955; Barker places the arrival of the book at ONR in April 1956, after Frederick R. Furth had, according to ONR's house publication, been relieved as Chief of Naval Research on December 31, 1955.[^1][^2][^4] ### Defense work A trade-press item reproduced on the site of the Salisbury archive reports that Varo, Inc., Garland, Texas, developed the "Varotron," a device generating infrared, visible and ultraviolet radiation by passing an electron beam over a grating, described by its inventor Winfield W. Salisbury in a report at the "recent American Optical Society meeting in Rochester, N. Y.," and covered by U.S. Patent No. 2,634,372, issued to Salisbury in 1953. The item says the device "appears to have application to communications and possibly exotic weapons, similar to optical masers (lasers)." The same archive lists Salisbury's position at Varo from 1958 to 1965 as "Research and Development in Radiation Weapons for [U.S. Air Force](/organizations/us-air-force/); Chief Scientist."[^3] Later Varo night vision products included the Noctron series, for which Varo, Inc. filed trademark applications on March 5, 1973 (Noctron IV, a night vision passive viewer using a multiple stage image intensifier) and May 5, 1980 (Noctron V, a second generation viewer using microchannel plate image tube technology).[^5] [^1]: Unsigned "Introduction" to the Annotated Edition, in M. K. Jessup, The Case for the UFO, Varo Edition, transcribed by the Quantum Future Group, 2003, pp. 7 to 9, https://archive.org/details/THECASEFORTHEUFOVaroEditionM.K.Jessup (djvu text, reread 2026-10-03). [^2]: Gray Barker, preface dated July 1973, same volume, pp. 2 to 6. [^3]: "Winfield W. Salisbury at Varo, Garland, Texas, 1958-1965," Salisbury archive page with reproduced trade-press item (publication and date of the item not shown on the page), https://mail.smecc.org/salisbury_at_varo.htm [^4]: Naval Research Reviews, vol. 9, no. 1 (January 1956), "New Chief of Naval Research," p. 22, https://www.onr.navy.mil/media/document/naval-research-reviews-vol-9-no-1-january-1956 [^5]: Varo Inc. trademark filings, Justia Trademarks owner listing, https://trademark.justia.com/owners/varo-inc-79620 (the page returns 403 to command-line fetches; filing dates and descriptions taken from a search summary of the listing, not independently opened).