This past March, I happened to drive down Field St. in Torrington, CT. To my amazement, there wasn't a single car in the adjoining parking lots and not a soul about. It struck me hard, The Torrington Company founded in 1866, was no more. I proceeded around the corner down North St, there was finally some sign of life at its corner with Prospect St.
The surrounding parking lots here were full, plenty of activity.. A sign on the newer section of the six story Standard Plant showed “RBC Bearings“. That’s a former Torrington employee, Mike Hartnett’s company. He and his company are more than surviving, they seem to be doing fine here and around the country.
Back in 2003, Ingersoll Rand sold off most of all the parts of The Torrington Company to The Timken Company which, in a move to eliminate redundancies and generate economies, has physically removed and integrated the Torrington Connecticut operations into its own.
I am sure many employees of the Ingersoll Rand / Torrington group have survived at Timken. For us on the outside, simply, The Torrington Company is gone.
In this blog we will delve into the history of the once flourishing Torrington Company and as much as all of you can contribute, lay out “what happened”. Participation in this blog will be key to its survival. We invite your suggestions and comments.
To start matters off , as our first subject, we will compile a list of Torrington’s Presidents/CEOs. Our second subject will be a timeline of Major Events. Of course, in all of the subjects laid out, we will invite your comments.
I will personally moderate the incoming Comments to eliminate the crazies, but I assure you any comments that are not offensive will be published.
Norm Massicotte
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This blog is designed to enable viewers to post their comments on various subjects related to The Torrington Company's demise as a separate corporate entity. We will try to answer the question "Why?" and hopefully provide guidance to other Companies who might find themselves in a similar situation. We will also try to be a vehicle for alumni to express their thoughts
Blog Archive
About Me
- Norm M
- North Reading, Massachusetts, United States
- Now retired, I was employed by The Torrington Company / Ingersoll Rand from 1963 through 1987. Recently widowed, relocated from TX to MA
7 comments:
My friend and fellow alumnus Bill O'Dea has made me aware of a history of The Torrington Company. I obtained it on the Internet and find it very well written. It's
"Progress Through Precision -The First 125 Years - The Torrington Company" by Edwin M. Lieberthal and edited by our Dwight E. Keeney,published in 1992 with an Introduction by the then President, J.Frank Travis.
It's a valuable document. I am thankful for its publication and recommend it highly
As a former Torrington Company employee, I've read the book "Progress Through Precision -The First 125 Years - The Torrington Company" by Edwin M. Lieberthal, and was very impressed with its history.
However, for the reasons we know, such legacy is harder and hader to be maintained here in North America. These days you will see more Americans, some may have been our former friends, busy transferring manufacturing operations in places such as Mexico, and Asian countries.
It's unfortunate for state such as Connecticut where I lived and enjoyed my life, where my son was born. It's tough on many people's lives. Believe or not, Torrington people will survive, move on and strive to be successful on other opportunities they're taking on.
History will prove that is the great legacy Torrington company has.
On 5/31/09, Thomas Bennett wrote:
Norm,
By way of backround we asked Don Lewis, after he retired, to update the Torrington Company History and we donated a copy of it to the Torrington Historical Society. It begins with the formation of the company in the 1860's and ends in the 1980's.
Tom Bennett
Thanks Tom for the info
We have been in contact with Mark McEachern, its Executive Director
and the Society(he) is included in our Emailings. Also a little while back, I have started to archive all the activity on the Blog when it is deleted. Annually I plan to send them the past year's file to add to their records.
Norm M
Hi Norm:
I have just finished reading “Progress Through Precision, The First 125 Years”, written by E.M. Lieberthal, which my daughter, Holly, found on E-Bay and bought for me!
This is a magnificent story of the founding, flourishing, and finally the demise of our company. (Operative word here is OUR!!) I would like to suggest strongly that everyone who has had an involvement with this company find some way to get to read it. It is beautifully written and has many nuggets of pure gold spread though out the entire narrative. This is a great story of forward thinking people, who risked quite a bit in bringing their ideas to fruition.
As we came into the modern era, I found that the underlying thrust towards excellence relied heavily upon Engineering. While the science gets scant notice in the beginning, portions of the company’s history, the unwritten mission, even then, was still couched in engineering.
Seeing the many names of the prominent people who were responsible for the strength and excellence of the products, and thus the company, was a walk down memory lane for me. My responsibilities tended more towards the production control, inventory control, and maintaining the company’s image in the marketplace, as a whole, through Customer Services which also evolved over a number of years. The years that I spent in Manufacturing, Engineering, Production Control, and finally in Sales, supervising the growth of our Customer Service Group was a telling factor in whatever success we enjoyed. The caliber of the people that we were able to attract to this group was and is outstanding. While our Sales People were graduate engineers, the people we used as their support group for the most part had business degrees with the only exception being that individual who had equivalent experience actually in the manufacturing details of the products. All of these experiences allowed me to write and install the programs of inventory controls for the After Market Distributor Division while working for Don Borst just before I was forced to retire.
The underlying strengths though, were lodged in the hands of our Engineering Department personnel and the inherent quality of those engineers charged with creating, maintaining, and improving upon our products was always obvious and robust.
My personal opinion, having had the privilege of working either with, or for, most of them starting with Don Lewis in Engineering, is that, when the company was turned away from the highest quality hard engineering that our reputation, industry wide, had been noted for, we then moved out on to the infamous slippery slope!
Be Well!
Are there any alumni from the 1985 era that can remember Jim Gardner or Ron Peterson? My interest is in the development of the "Hydraflex" bearing for journals and thrust applications. Both of these gentlemen were published in DESIGN NEWS 6-3-85 and I would like to follow up on status of development.
I am a Graduate student at Trinity College, in Hartford. When it came time to choose a topic for my thesis, I chose The Torrington Company because I think it is a great story, and I live in Torrington and wanted to write about something local. I have researched extensively in the collection at the Torrington Historical Society, but if anyone reading this happens to have primary materials from the company, I'd love to know about it! My thesis focuses on the company's origin as Excelsior Needle in 1866 and covers up to the point where it was bought by IR.
Hi Tom
We do not have your Email address so the only way readers can respond to you is by including a comment as you did.
If you would prefer hearing directly, send me your Email and I can included in the update I periodically send out to alumni whose addresses I have and/or post it in the comments section of this section in the blog.
my address is NDMassicotte@gmail.com
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