LOS ANGELES COUNTY - News from March 31, 1985

Carson-based Tylan Corp. received a $1.6-million contract for a robot-equipped silicon wafer diffusion furnace from a Canadian semiconductor manufacturer, and a $4.5 million contract from a Korean company. The furnace uses half the electricity of a conventional processing furnace and occupies less space.

Occidental Petroleum Corp., Los Angeles, and Argentina’s state oil company agreed on a rescheduling of payments and a 15-year extension of Oxy’s contract to operate oil fields in that country.

Cardis Corp., Beverly Hills, completed its acquisition of the assets and business of Chanslor & Lyon Co., a Brisbane, Calif.-based wholesale auto parts distributor, for $15.7 million in cash, stock and notes.

Logicon Inc., Los Angeles, said its RDA unit received a three-year, $4-million contract from the Defense Nuclear Agency for technical support for nuclear weapons testing and research. Also, Logicon said RDA received a three-year, $22-million contract to continue supporting the Defense Nuclear Agency’s research development test and evaluation programs in the field of nuclear weapon effects.

CALIFORNIA

ICOT Corp. of Mountain View received a $500,000 contract from Air Canada to provide computer work-stations for the Montreal-based carrier’s reservations system.

Axonics Inc., a Mountain View-based allergy-diagnostics company, has been acquired by Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. (3M), of St. Paul. Terms were not disclosed.

San Jose-based Technical Equities Corp. agreed to sell its Little Giant Industries Inc. unit to a group of private investors for $6 million in cash and notes. The Provo, Utah-based unit makes metal ladders.

Vitalink Communications Corp., Mountain View, has agreed to buy coder-decoder devices from San Jose-based Compression Labs Inc., a contract valued in excess of $3.5 million. The devices will be incorporated into Vitalink’s video-conferencing products.

Hexcel Corp., San Francisco, said it acquired the 50% of the French firm Stevens-Genin S.A. that it did not already own from J.P. Stevens & Co. Terms weren’t disclosed. Stevens-Genin, which makes advanced-fiber composite materials, had been owned jointly by Hexcel and J.P. Stevens since 1980.

Priam Corp., San Jose, said it signed an agreement valued at more than $5 million to supply Perkin-Elmer Corp., Norwalk, Conn., with its Vertex 5-inch Winchester disk drives. Priam recently merged with Vertex Peripherals Corp.

Watkins-Johnson Co., Palo Alto, said it was awarded a follow-on contract valued at more than $8.3 million by General Dynamics Corp., St. Louis. Watkins-Johnson will supply microwave electronic filters for the Sparrow missile program.

Bio-Response Inc., Hayward, said it entered into a seven-month contract with CIBA-Geigy Ltd. of Basel, Switzerland, that will boost its payments from that company to over $2 million. The contract calls for production of a cellular protein secreted by a cell line supplied by CIBA-Geigy.