Corporate History: The Timken Company

Veteran St. Louis carriage maker Henry Timken patented a design in 1898 for tapered roller bearings (enclosed bearings between a pair of concentric rings). The following year Timken and his sons, William and Henry (H. H.) Timken, founded the Timken Roller Bearing Axle Company to make bearings for carriage axles.

In 1902 the company moved to Canton, Ohio, to be near the growing steelworks of Pittsburgh and the new auto industries of Buffalo, New York; Cleveland; and Detroit. With the debut of the Model T in 1908, the Timkens' business soared. In 1909 Henry Timken died. That year a separate company, the Timken-Detroit Axle Company, was formed in Detroit to serve the auto industry. The original company changed its name to the Timken Roller Bearing Company and continued to produce bearings. Also in 1909 Vickers began making bearings and axles under license from Timken (Timken acquired that operation in 1959).

The story of The Timken Company starts at a point where traditional success stories usually end, at the conclusion of a long and profitable career. This was when Henry Timken, a 19th century visionary and innovator in carriage manufacturing, patented the tapered roller bearing, in 1898. The following year, he formed a company to produce his innovation. Through a century, the company grew to make bearings of all types, specialty steel and an array of related products and services. That growth has included a number of acquisitions, the largest of which was The Torrington Company, in 2003. Today, The Timken Company is a global leader in friction management and power transmission. Sales have grown to $4.5 billion with 26,000 associates in 27 countries.

Suffering steel shortages during WWI, in 1916 the company began making its own steel. By the 1920s the rail industry had adopted Timken bearings to increase the speed of trains. Timken stock was sold to the public for the first time in 1922.

WWII created increased demand for Timken's products, and the company opened several new plants. The AP bearing -- a revolutionary prelubricated, self-contained railroad bearing unveiled by Timken in 1954 -- boosted the company's railroad segment, and a new plant, the Columbus Railroad Bearing Plant, opened in 1958.

H. H. Timken's son, W. Robert Timken, became president in 1960 and chairman in 1968. The company continued to grow during the 1960s by opening plants in Brazil and France. It adopted its current name in 1970. W. R. Timken Jr., grandson of the founder, became chairman in 1975. That year the company bought specialty alloy maker Latrobe Steel.

In 1982, with increasing competition from Europe and Japan, the company suffered its first loss since the Depression. Five years later it established Indian joint venture Tata Timken to make bearings for agricultural equipment, heavy machinery, and railcars.

Timken bought precision-bearing maker MPB Corporation in 1990. The company opened its first European steel operations in 1993 and the following year introduced its environmentally progressive Dynametal steel products. It bought the Rail Bearing Service Corporation in 1995.

Timken formed joint venture Yantai Timken in 1996 to make bearings in China. It also acquired US steel firms Ohio Alloy Steels and Houghton & Richards, Sanderson Kayser in the UK (now called Sanderson Special Steels), and Prema Milmet (bearings) in Poland. In 1997 Timken purchased Gnutti Carlo SpA (bearings, Italy) and the aerospace bearing operations of UK-based Torrington.

The company opened a bearings plant in the UK in 1998, and in December of that year it bought UK-based Desford Steel Tubes. The General Motors strike, transformer outages, and new equipment costs hurt the company's earnings, however. As a result, Timken closed its Australian bearing-manufacturing operations.

In 1999 Timken cut production capacity to 80% and continued to consolidate operations and restructure into global business units. The company closed plants in Australia, restructured operations in South Africa (cutting about 1,700 jobs), and transferred its European distribution to an outside company in France.

To meet European demand, Timken expanded production at its plants in Poland and Romania in 2000. In early 2001 the company announced that it would lay off more than 7% of its workforce. Timken entered into a joint venture with SKF (ball bearings, Sweden) in 2001 to make bearing components in Brazil. Later Timken acquired French steel component maker Lecheres Industries SAS. The next year Timken divided its aerospace and super precision (miniature bearings and precision assemblies) division into four integrated global businesses.

Timken acquired the Ingersoll-Rand unit, The Torrington Co., for $840 million in 2003. That next year, the company enhanced its Timken Aerospace subsidiary through the acquisition of Alcor Engine Company and Advance Repair Technologies. It also acquired SES LLC's Technical Group, a provider of infrared thermography and vibration analysis.

Learn more about Timken here. Photo Credit: The Timken Company