Bedfordshire Archives Service Catalogue
  • Reference
    IG
  • Title
    Records of Cutler Hammer Europa, Bedford
  • Date free text
    1906-1983
  • Production date
    From: 1906 To: 1983
  • Admin/biog history
    In 1883 George Mower, an American citizen and an engineer, came to England and opened up an office for the Sturtevant Company of America at 147 Queen Victoria Street, London. Between 1895 and 1897 he visited an old school friend, Harry Cutler in America. Cutler had a business in Electric Motor Control. Cutler agreed to forward enquiries from Europe to the Sturtevant office. Mower then imported C-H faceplate button type starters and re-badged them with a Sturtevant nameplate before supplying them to customers. Later it was found that alterations were needed and additional premises were acquired at Bankside, London, to deal with the growing electrical business. In 1904 A H Curtis, a consulting electrical engineer, joined the company and around this time J T Mould (Sales), A H Mackley (Engineering) and S E Hall (estimating) also joined. In 1906 The Adams Manufacturing Company was formed in Bedford. Arthur Harry Adams was originally the European manager for the Eastern Electric company of America and a Sturtevant engineer. Adams had an interest in the Hewitt Motor Company of America for he married Mr Hewitt's daughter. Two thirds of the Bedford factory was allocated to car production and the remainder to rheostat production. George Mower was one of Adam's main financial backers. On 1st January 1906 the Sturtevamt Electrical business was transferred to Adams works at Bedford and the rheostats were called 'ADAMS IGRANIC type made by Adams Manufacturing Company'. The name Igranic was the result of a competition and was explained as follows: I was taken from the iron wire tube resistances wound on asbestos tubes and mounted behind the rheostat. GRAN was taken from the slate base on which the button contacts were mounted. This slate base was finished in a marble-like covering resembling granite. It had no electrical significance but was only a finish. The IC came from the two last letters of electric. Adams continued to build cars in the main part of the works and introduced foot pedals for clutch and brakes and pioneered the electric starter motor. In July 1913 the electrical assets of Adams Manufacturing Company with the premises of both businesses were acquired by Mr Bacon who was president of Cutler-Hammer. On 14th August a new English company was formed - the Igranic Electric Company. The car business was sold. Capital for the new company was 35,000 in 1 shares. Five sevenths of the company shares were owned by George Mower and two sevenths by Cutler-Hammer. From 1913 the company were mainly concerned with manufacturing electric motor control gear. In 1920 to 1925 they entered the radio business making 'honeycomb' tuning coils under licence from Westinghouse, and sets of components for amateurs to make their own sets. When the company decided to make complete radio sets themselves they ran into trouble. In 1923 Igranic and Cutler-Hammer entered into the first formal written agreement. This gave Igranic the right to patent Cutler-Hammer inventions throughout the world excepting America. The agreement was for 21 years and payment to C-H was 15% of Igranic profits. C-H then sold their part interest in Igranic to George Mower. Between 1936 and 1937 Igranic decided that their future lay not so much in the starter business as in control gear and thus started their entry into the steel mill and crane gear business. The first steel mill equipment was started in 1937 and Igranic and C-H designed it together. George Mower died in 1941 and to meet death duties Igranic was sold. C-H was not in a position to buy and through Sales director J H Enion's association with Mr Hirst (Brookhirst had been purchased some time before by Metal Industries) Igranic was bought by Metal Industries. When the agreement with Cutler-Hammer came to an end a new one was negotiated with a fixed royalty of 80,000 per annum. In 1952 this was superseded with one that had a royalty of 2% turnover. From 1959 the company was known as Brookhirst Igranic Ltd. This was taken over by Thorn Electrical Industries in 1967 and was bought by Cutler-Hammer Incorporated in 1971. 1974 saw the name change to Cutler-Hammer Europa Ltd. In 1978 the Bedford plant became the Europe and Africa headquarters for the Eaton Corporation's Industrial Control and Power Distribution Division.
  • System of arrangement
    The first deposit in 1979 was arranged by series as received at that time, where possible the second deposit (2002) has been added to these series with new series being created for material which did not fit within the original scheme.
  • External document

    IG.pdf - Full catalogue

  • Level of description
    fonds
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