Betts history

In 1878, the firm was reorganized as the Betts Machine Co.

Gauge Works, a Philadelphia company which they bought and moved to DE in 1879.

Some of those were marked B.M. CO. They sold the machinist tool portion of the company to the Taylor-Rice Engineering Co. in 1895.

In 1898, Robert McKean Thomas and Hobart D. Betts, both engineering graduates from Princeton University, established an agency in New York City for selling electrical conduit.

Founded in 1901, Betts is a family-owned company with a rich tradition of innovation, quality, and community spirit.

The partners formed a New York corporation, Thomas and Betts Company, in 1905.

By 1912, business was going strong, and Thomas and Betts decided that if they were going to keep selling electrical conduit, it might as well be their own.

In 1917, The Thomas & Betts Company officially became incorporated and moved their headquarters to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where their engineering, manufacturing, and sales divisions were finally able to share the same the facility.

Standard corporation service, daily revised - Page 64 Standard Statistics Company - 1918

In 1921, a young and ambitious Nestor J. MacDonald – the man who would later become Thomas & Betts’ President and CEO – joined the company as a salesman.

In 1922 the Betts Machine Co. merged with Colburn Machine Tool Co, Hilles and Jones Co, Modern Tool Co. and Newton Machine Tool Works to form the Consolidated Machine Tool Corp. of Rochester, NY.

Growth and success continued for the company until The Crash of 1929, which signaled the end of the traditional machinist era.

1953 marked Thomas & Betts' introduction of the world's first flexible, liquid-tight, high-performance conduit connectors, which were incorporated into the Nautilus – the world's first nuclear submarine.

In 1958, Thomas & Betts made engineering (and cable organization) history when they unleashed the Ty-Rap® cable tie, which had been developed to facilitate wire harnessing in aircraft.

Meanwhile, in 1960, Thomas, Jr., retired as CEO and was replaced by Nestor J. MacDonald, the former vice-president of marketing.

Building on its existent Canadian presence, a new international division was established in 1962.

T&B was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1963.

By 1968, Thomas & Betts had seen 72 years of continual growth, and had spanned global markets and interests with their innovative, ever-expanding product lines.

After J. David Parkinson--former head of the company's electrical business--succeeded MacDonald as CEO in 1974, electronic product development was stepped up yet again.

In response to the growing popularity of modular office furniture and the related need for adaptable office wiring configurations, Thomas & Betts began marketing its proprietary Versa-Trak™ under-carpet wiring system in 1980.

Moreover, Ouest Electronic Connecteurs, a French maker of electronic connectors and custom components of which T&B had acquired 80 percent in 1982, provided additional R&D and manufacturing capabilities in Europe.

By 1983, a Luxembourg facility had been established to produce electronic connectors for even broader European markets.

After becoming the nation's largest street light manufacturer, American Electric was sold to Forstmann Little & Co., a leveraged buyout firm, in June 1985.

Six months later, T&B sold Vitramon--the manufacturer of ceramic chip capacitors it had acquired in 1987--to Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. for $184 million.

The 1989 acquisition of Holmberg Electronics Corp., a manufacturer of electronic connectors, was more in line with T&B's historical field of specialty.

When they acquired American Electric in 1992, Thomas & Betts not only doubled in size, it became the largest North American manufacturer of electrical components.

With such a dynamic range of constitutive parts, American Electric was better suited to give T&B "a broader market presence, and [to] function more effectively as a single global unit," as Chairperson and CEO Dunnigan remarked in the 1993 letter to shareholders.

On January 1, 1994, Clyde R. Moore became president and COO. He brought to the post experience as previous president of Thomas & Betts electrical division and president of American Electric before the acquisition.

The firm had 1995 revenues of $535 million.

Merger, restructuring, and other charges totaling $97.1 million were taken in the fourth quarter of 1996, resulting in a net earnings total for the year of just $59.9 million.

Acquisition activity increased again in 1998 as nine purchases were completed.

In January 1999 T&B reached an agreement to acquire AFC Cable Systems Inc. for $504 million.