Robert Christian Weaver Sr., co-inventor of the AZUSA radar, was a Fresno native, graduated from the University of California Berkeley in 1938 with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. He joined the Army Air Corps in 1940, rising to major during World War II. He was responsible for radio and radar equipment in the China-Burma-India Theater. After World War II Weaver began his civilian career with what was then Consolidated Vultee Aircraft in 1946. "After the war he had a choice of engineering jobs; one in Los Angeles, the other in San Diego with Consolidated," his son said. With Convair, Weaver's assignments took him to Cape Canaveral and several other test sites. His specialty became designing radar, guidance and tracking systems for guided missiles and space vehicles. had a career in the aerospace industry that influenced the future of guided missiles and other space vehicles. In the early 1950s, Weaver and a colleague invented the AZUSA continuous wave tracking system, implemented at the Air Force Missile Test Center, Cape Canaveral. This system was designed to measure the trajectory of missiles, and was instrumental in pioneering military missile tests and the Project Mercury manned space program.The technology that Weaver and his colleague, Jim Crooks, devised flourished during the Cold War. It was applied to the Navy's Polaris Project and the Air Force's Thor, Atlas missiles and Titan Projects. It also was used by NASA in the Saturn IV (Apollo) program. One of the advantages of the Azusa system over its predecessors was that it required fewer radar sites and operating crews. The increased emphasis on ballistic missiles and efforts to improve their accuracy spurred the development of the Azusa system and Mistram, a competing technology developed by GE in the early 1960s.