Milestones in History - II - Second 50 Years

1917
-The Torrington Company of Connecticut formed and all the assets of the Excelsior Needle Company are transferred to The Torrington Company of Maine. The Excelsior Needle Company survives as the “Excelsior Plant”.
-During World War I, under U.S. Government mandate, began, reluctantly, producing surgical needles previously imported from England.
-Purchased the Conley Inn (now known as The Yankee Pedlar Inn) located on Main Street and expanded the number of rooms to accommodate as a girls’ dormitory, 200 recently recruited female employees

1920s
-Purchased Domestic Electric Manufacturing Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, a manufacturer of electric vacuum cleaners and combined it with the carpet sweeper operations at the Standard Plant.
-Sold vacuum cleaners door to door, a disastrous adventure in marketing which was fortunately offset by a surge in sales of wheel spokes for automobile wire wheels
-Bought out the Tiley-Pratt Company of Essex, Connecticut which used a draw-bench type of rolling to form spokes instead of the swaging process.
-Purchased Chicago Handlebar Company and relocated the bicycle handlebar operations to the Standard Plant.
-Acquired the Chauncey A. Williams Company of Manchester, New Hampshire a manufacturer of heavy-gauge knitting machine latch needles.
-Invested in the development and production of spring-beard needles
-Contracted with International Business Machines for the installation of tabulating equipment

1930s
-Acquired the New Home Sewing Machine Company of Orange, Massachusetts, a manufacturer of sewing machines and needles, from the Free Sewing Machine Company of Rockford, Illinois.
-Purchased the felting needle machinery and business of H. Lydall & Foulds, of Manchester, Connecticut
-Operations in England moved to a new plant on Torrington Avenue in Coventry.
-Torrington engineer Edmund K. Brown who had been hired in 1920, developed a new type of bearing for the company, a self-contained needle bearing, a one-piece cup containing a circle of needle rollers with shaped ends, held in place by curled-in lips of the cup; it saved space and weight.
-Acquired the Westfield Manufacturing Company, Westfield, Massachusetts, a manufacturer of bicycles with the popular brand name “Columbia”
-Acquired Bantam Ball Bearing Company of South Bend, Indiana which had its origins in Bantam, Connecticut..
-The assets of The Torrington Company of Connecticut are absorbed by The Torrington Company of Maine and is dissolved.
-The Company is listed on the Boston Stock Exchange
-Diversification into bicycles and parts carries the Company during the depression.
-Conley Inn is sold (1939).

1940s
-Torrington products prove vital to the WWII effort particularly bearings in aircraft and a myriad of parts for military applications
-Manufacture of ball bearings squeezed out of the Standard Plant by needle bearings and the development of the PN (pulley needle) series, as a substitute for the K series ball bearing, where a drawn cup with a complement of needle rollers is combined with a machined and ground inner ring to produce a non-separable assembly, without retainer washers.
-The Bantam Bearings Division in South Bend was busy turning-out heavier needle and radial roller bearings as well ball and roller thrust bearings.
-Bazooka casings, rifle, airplane, shell and incendiary bomb parts were produced.
-A standard line of bearings produced to forecast, was developed, the self-aligning spherical roller bearing by the Bantam division.
-Decision made to man the bearing sales force with graduate engineers trained to design bearings into a customer’s product
-Program to market bearings through Distributors is established in addition to direct sales.
-Labor unions are established at both the Standard and the Excelsior plants.
-Purchased the vacated plant of Stanley Home Products in Westfield, Massachusetts for the production of needles.

1950s
-Sales of $33.6 million in 1950, $52 million in 1951, $58.5 million in 1957
-Developed in England, the manufacture of needle bearings and knitting machine needles from machinery shipped from the Bedford Canada factory.
- Acquired Aghi Zebra San Giorgio, a knitting needle manufacturer of Genoa, Italy and changed its name to Torrington S.p.A.
-Tariff rates on machine needles entering the U.S. from abroad are reduced opening the market to foreign competition.
- Bantam’s needle roller production moved from South Bend to Torrington.
- Built the Broad Street plant to consolidate needle roller production in one location and relieve space at the Standard Plant
-Added a line of needles for warp knitting machines.
- Developed the needle thrust bearing, a self-contained unit to handle axial force, which would be used in automatic transmissions among many other applications.
- Purchased the Progressive Manufacturing Company a manufacturer of machine screws, nuts and bolts, fasteners, located close to the Standard Plant.
- Company restructured into product divisions, Needles, Needle Bearings, Specialties, Swager-Surgical and Bantam
- J Series with separated and retained rollers within a cup and WJ Series with a retainer and a complement of rollers with not outer ring or cup were introduced.

1960s
-Sales of $67.5 million
-The Torrington Company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange with the ticker symbol of TOR
-The Piedmont-Oconee Needle Plant built in Walhalla, South Carolina , for fine-gauge knitting machine needles, the Company’s first venture South and in a non-union environment (1960)
- Second South, Carolina plant built in Clinton, to manufacture needle bearings (1961)
- Purchased a latch knitting machine needle firm in Nova Friburgo, Brazil, named it Torrington-Magus, Ltd. and assigned responsibility to The Torrington Company, Ltd. of Canada
- Sold Westfield Manufacturing to Columbia Manufacturing and disposed of Progressive Manufacturing
-The Westfield knitting machine needle plant is closed and the New Home plant sewing machine operations are transferred to the new Walhalla plant
-Constructed the Wire Mill next to the Broad Street Plant, enabling a reduction in raw material costs by dealing in fewer rod sizes to be drawn down to the variety of wire (roller) sizes required.
- Bantam Division introduced triple-ring roller bearings and a line of self-aligning ball bushings with smaller sizes made at the Standard Plant .
-With Nippon Seiko KK, Ltd. (NSK) formed joint venture of NSK- Torrington Co. Ltd. (NTC) in Takasaki City, Japan, owning 49.03% of the equity interest (1963) Initial technical assistance and training provided by Torrington’s U.K. operations
- Universal Joint product line incorporating drawn cup needle bearings developed at the Coventry, England plant.
- South Bend developed screwdown tapered tapered roller thrust bearings and aluminum bearing cages
- Drawn cup overrunning roller clutch conceived and developed by John Cowles at the Connecticut facilities.
-The Clinton and Walhalla plants are expanded and a new research and development building was constructed next to the Standard Plant
-Production of Heavy bearings started at a new plant in Darlington, England
-The Bantam Division shifted production of some bearings to a new plant, Tyger River, in Union, South Carolina.
-The Needle Bearing division introduced a new antifriction nose wheel for chain saws and also sealed drawn cup roller bearing.
-New plant constructed in Wurselen, Germany to accommodate the manufacture of needle bearings, sewing machine needles and eventually felting needles and universal joints
-First computer installed in 1962 and subsequent teleprocessing with the Southern plants
-Sales amounted to $93.4 million (60% bearings, 30% needles) in 1965
-Nadella incorporated NRB in India and formed a joint venture between NRB Bearings Limited and Torrington with a plant at Waluj.

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