Howard Hughes commissioned Interstate Aircraft to make a vacuum for his TWA airliners during WWII. Interstate Aircraft was owned by a personal Friend of Howard Hughes, a man who co-designed Hughes pre-WWII racing airplanes. Howard Hughes specified the vacuum had to be small enough to fit under an airline seat and wanted it as light weight as possible, hence the use of the Magnalite magnesium-aluminum alloy in the vacuum body.
Compact Model 1s were already in production during WWII. I have an example of one that was made in El Segundo. They were made alongside the Kadet trainer, TDR unmanned bomber and other aircraft components Interstate Aircraft was building as part of the war effort. That plant in El Segundo was closed right at the end of WWII when aircraft production ceased. Interstate Aircraft sold their aircraft production tooling, changed their name to Interstate Engineering Company and moved from El Segundo to Anaheim. I have seen Compact C2s with data tags indicating they were made in El Segundo so that tells me that Interstate had already gone from the vertically split body used on the Model one to the horizontally split body used on the C-2 and all subsequent Compacts and Tristars since before the end of WWII.
