Hargrove Gravimetrics

Hargrove Gravimetrics (commonly called HG for short) is the sole manufacturer of Artificial Gravity systems in the known universe, and as such, is a well-respected and ridiculously powerful corporation, especially given its relatively small size. Started as Hargrove Assay Group by exogeologist Donald Hargrove, the company was nothing more than a survey ship with one crewman, looking to cash in on the spike in titanium prices following the ritelanium boom. Business was indeed booming until Hargrove made a discovery, the nature of which remains speculation to this day. The most widely-accepted theory is that he found some sort of crystal, only grown in microgravity, which when an electric current is passed through it at specific frequencies and voltages can generate a field of artificial gravity.

What is known is that Hargrove, known to be something of a recluse to begin with, used his life savings to turn his ship into a floating laboratory, frequently found in orbit around Mars. Two years later, the Hargrove AG-1 prototype was debuted to the world via gridcast, and was almost universally denounced as a hoax. The only interested party was Xian Li, a likewise reclusive and eccentric genius and inventor, whose innovations in micro-fusion reactors had revolutionized power generation twenty years before. Following an in-person demonstration, Xian saw the huge potential in the technology, blindly investing millions of credits into a fully automated manufacturing facility in return for a permanent three percent share of the profits, an arrangement that has kept Xian Fusion Systems wealthy and solvent for centuries. Hargrove never divulged the actual technological secret to anyone but his nephew, who succeeded him as chairman and sole proprietor of Hargrove Gravimetrics upon his death in 2853.

The Hargrove manufacturing plant, long since moved to a secure facility in Earth orbit, serves as factory, distribution center, home and something of a prison for the sole proprietor (currently Helena Carter, Hargrove's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grand-niece), who is not allowed to leave upon being ensconced upon the throne, until their death. This facility is one of the most well-defended installations in the universe, thanks to a tacit agreement with the Inner Sol Alliance military, as well as several other interested parties, all of whom would rather have a single, neutral vendor for the technology than to have it fall into any one faction's control, or for the technology to be lost entirely in a raid. HG, as it is commonly called, has thousands of employees in systems integration, distribution and sales throughout the known systems, but none are repair staff. HG is universally renowned for their charity work and humanitarian efforts, and it was one of the first major concerns to publicly back the Syntek in their quest for recognition as sentient beings.