EaglePicher Holdings, Inc. history

With new partners, Wood moved the company to a new location in 1858 and changed the name of the firm to the Eagle White Lead Works.

William Christie Wood, who succeeded his father as president of Eagle in 1883, led the fight to keep Eagle independent.

By 1887, a consortium of eastern lead companies formed a powerful association called the Lead Trust.

Unable to sustain the company in light of the actions of the powerful 31 Lead Trust firms (which merged to form the National Lead Company in 1891), Cox hired three managers away from his Cincinnati rival, the Eckstein White Lead Company.

Several years passed when, finally, in 1903, Eagle and several other independents secured a stake in the American Metal Company, a mining and smelting house.

In December 1905, after receiving an invitation to join National Lead, Eagle received an inquiry from the Picher Lead Company, a mining outfit in Joplin, Missouri, proposing a buyout.

Late in 1913 a Picher drill rig became stuck in five feet of mud while being shipped during a thunderstorm.

Swift ordered the company's research department, established in 1915 by Picher, to develop new uses for zinc.

EaglePicher Industries Inc. produced lead and zinc products, beginning in 1916.

In 1919 he ordered the decentralization enterprise, forming an organization similar to General Electric, General Motors, and DuPont, in which specific divisions enjoyed operating autonomy.

Eagle-Picher expanded its production capacity in 1925 by taking control of the Ontario Smelting Company of Hockerville, Oklahoma.

Arthur Bendelari succeeded Swift as president of the company in February 1928 and eventually moved the company's headquarters back to Cincinnati.

Serious economic declines occurred in the months following the stock market crash in 1929.

The Central mill opened in October 1932.

In 1933, Eagle-Picher faced a serious threat from the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, which had begun to organize workers in the tri-state region.

In January 1937, Bowlby recommended further decentralization of the enterprise, creating fully autonomous divisions.

The war brought Eagle-Picher into several new markets, particularly production of germanium, the first semiconducting material, essential to the invention of the transistor in 1947 as well as to the development of solid state electronics.

Back on the acquisition trail in 1952, Eagle-Picher took over the Ohio Rubber Company of Willoughby, Ohio, making it a division of the company.

By 1955, Eagle-Picher held 95 percent of the market.

After divesting its Mexican operations for $1.4 million in 1956, Eagle-Picher purchased the Chicago Vitreous Corporation, a porcelain enameling company, and the Gora-Lee Corporation, a Connecticut-based rubber molds manufacturer.

Under Shore, who retired in favor of William D. Atterbury in 1967, Eagle-Picher fell short of establishing dominant horizontal or vertical monopolies yet remained too closely tied to specific industrial markets to be considered typically diversified.

Meanwhile, in March 1972, Eagle-Picher spun off Davis Wire to a group led by the division's management for $23.5 million.

These were followed in 1976 with the purchase of Elmac, a mining supply company, and Pritchett Engineering, a precision machining company serving the petroleum industry.

By 1982, injured workers diagnosed with mesothelioma and other asbestos diseases began filing lawsuits against the company.

In 1984, EaglePicher and seven other defendants were ordered to pay $575,000 to Thelma Press.

In March 1992, Painter retired, and his duties were assumed again by Thomas Petry.

Eagle-Picher emerged from court protection in early 1997, having achieved its primary objective in filing for bankruptcy: protecting itself from being destroyed by injury claims.

EaglePicher filed for bankruptcy a second time in 2005, due to more than $500 million in new debt from asbestos and other environmental claims.

In January 2021, the trust approved maintaining the payment percentage at 33%, which is considered high compared to other asbestos trust funds.