My neighbor in Woodland Hills who just passed last year was a Hughes radar engineer with several patents.
With all the airplane/ aerospace in SoCal from the 1930's- til? The place was rife with wonder machines. As a kid in the 1960's X-planes and the space race was in all around. With Hughes, Litton, Lear Siegler and other avionics companies being a small part of the industry. Douglas, North American, Lockheed, Northrop, Martin etc.
All these companies had experimental labs/shops. How many amazing machines were amassed in just this one little corner of the world?