Short answers, pulled from the story.
Convair was an American aerospace company formed in 1943 by the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft. It produced major Cold War aircraft including the B-36 Peacemaker, B-58 Hustler, F-102 Delta Dagger, and F-106 Delta Dart, as well as the Atlas rockets used to launch the first crewed American orbital spaceflights and the Centaur upper stage that influenced the Apollo program's Saturn V rocket.
Convair was created in 1943 as the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation through the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft. General Dynamics purchased the entire company in March 1953, and Convair operated as the Convair Division within General Dynamics for most of its subsequent history until all remaining legal entities were deactivated in 1996.
The Convair 880 and Convair 990 Coronado were four-engine jet airliners that first flew on the 27th of January 1959 and the 24th of January 1961 respectively. They were somewhat faster but smaller than the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8. Only 65 Convair 880s and 37 Convair 990s were ever built, and the company exited airliner design after those two programs failed to find a profitable niche.
Convair's Atlas rocket, first proposed in 1945 and first launched in 1957, carried the first crewed American orbital spaceflights during Project Mercury in 1962 and 1963. Paired with the Centaur upper stage, also designed by Convair, the Atlas-Centaur family launched more than 100 satellites and sent Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 on trajectories out of the Solar System. Derivatives of the design remained in use as of 2025.
The Centaur was an upper stage rocket designed and built by Convair, first used starting in 1962. It was the first widely used rocket to burn liquid hydrogen combined with liquid oxygen in space. That fuel combination directly influenced the Saturn S-II second stage and Saturn S-IVB third stage of the Saturn V Moon rocket used in the Apollo program.
General Dynamics deactivated all remaining Convair legal entities in 1996. The Kearny Mesa complex in San Diego was demolished between 1994 and 1996, and homes and offices now occupy the site. The Lindbergh Field plant that produced B-24s during World War II was also demolished; a consolidated rental car facility now stands there. At its peak, Convair employed 18,000 people in San Diego.