Armais Arutunoff was born in Tiflis, Russia, and immigrated to the United States in 1923. Before coming to the U.S., he had formed a small company of his own, called Reda, to manufacture his idea for electric submergible motors. He later settled in Germany and then came with his wife and one-year-old daughter to the United States settling in Michigan, then Los Angeles, and ultimately opened his company in Bartlesville.

The petroleum industry immediately showed interest in his inventions and he formed Bart Manufacturing Company. One of his pumps and motors soon were installed in an oil well near Burns, Kansas – the first equipment of its kind to be used in a well. News spread quickly and by 1930 the company was expanded and renamed Reda Pump Company. It later became a division of TRW Inc. in 1939. Arutunoff’s company held 60 patents for industrial equipment, including the Electrodrill, which aided scientists in penetrating through the Antarctic ice cap for the first time in 1967. A joint resolution later was passed by the Oklahoma House and Senate naming him “Mr. Americanism of Bartlesville.”