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History of the Pennsylvania Crusher Corporation
Our First Hundred Years…
The Pennsylvania Crusher Company was incorporated under the laws of New York on June 12, 1905, for the purpose of manufacturing and marketing the inventions of its founder, George Wills Borton. His principal asset was his patent for the Borton Adjustable Cage Hammermill, granted on May 17, 1904.
George W. Borton was born on November 6, 1870, of an old New Jersey Quaker family. His ancestor, John Borton, came to Rancocas, Burlington County, New Jersey from Northamptonshire in 1679. George W. Borton was educated at the Westtown School and studied mechanical engineering at Cornell for three years. He began his career in the shop of Thomas H. Dallett & Company in Philadelphia, was a student apprentice at Westinghouse Electric in Pittsburgh, and then returned to Philadelphia as an inspection engineer for Charles Edgerton and salesman for the Coatesville Boiler Works.
Around the turn of the century, Borton organized the Borton-Tierney Company with J. Wilbur Tierney. Borton-Tierney was apparently a holding or sales company controlling a number of small machine building firms, among them the Shepard Electric Crane and Hoist Company and the Philadelphia Pneumatic Tool Company. It was at Borton-Tierney in New York that he met his eventual partner, William A. Battey.
Battey, a fellow Quaker, was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, on July 27, 1876. After graduating in engineering from Haverford, he served as a sales representative for Borton-Tierney (he was apparently related to Tierney), as New York office manager of Philadelphia Pneumatic Tool, and as sales agent for Shepard Electric Crane & Hoist. Although a mechanical engineer in his own right (he contributed twelve patents to the firm to Borton’s thirtyone), Battey’s principal contribution was his sales expertise. He remained in New York until 1917, when he was brought to Philadelphia as Vice President, Sales.
Little is presently known of the details of the founding of Pennsylvania Crusher, particularly the extent to which it remained under the umbrella of Borton-Tierney and the fate of the latter firm. Pennsylvania Crusher was exclusively an engineering and sales firm. Manufacturing took place at two job shops, the Hilyard Company in Norristown, and the Bradley Pulverizer Company in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
The first order, from United States Coal & Coke in 1904, preceded incorporation, so the company began with good prospects. In 1905, the firm developed the first all-steel Bradford Breaker, modifying an 1873 design by Hezekiah Bradford that had been clumsy and inefficient when executed in cast iron. Early sales to U. S. Coal & Coke and other subsidiaries of the new United States Steel Corporation (including twelve units to the new Gary Works) proved to be a major coup, and put the company on a sound basis. Pennsylvania Crushers found wide acceptance in the coke, electric utility, and cement industries, including a $1 million order by the U.S.S.R. in 1927-28.
Much of Borton’s inventive work was done in the seclusion of “Runaway,” a retreat in the Pine Barrens near New Lisbon, New Jersey, which he built in partnership with his brothers. Here he built a high tower and conducted experiments by dropping rocks and observing the way they shattered, frequently summoning his staff from Philadelphia for hurried conferences. He also used the property to test camping gear for his friend David I. Abercrombie of Abercrombie & Fitch, as well as for annual company picnics beginning in 1918.
The company was operated exclusively by Borton and his associates until 1947, when it was acquired by Bath Iron Works of Bath, Maine, for $500,000. Bath, a major builder of naval vessels, was actively seeking to diversify to compensate for the loss of war orders. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bath, Pennsylvania Crusher Company maintained its offices in Philadelphia, and all manufacturing was transferred from independent contractors to Maine. On May 1, 1950, Bath acquired the Dixie Machinery Manufacturing Company of St. Louis, incorporated in 1918. Dixie originally manufactured feed mills and had expanded into making crushers for the cement, bauxite, and ceramic industries. The engineering department was moved to Philadelphia, and manufacturing was gradually concentrated at Bath.
The operations of Dixie Machinery were eventually completely absorbed by Pennsylvania Crusher. In 1954, the company moved its offices from Philadelphia to West Chester, and the firm became the Pennsylvania Crusher Division of Bath Iron Works. The original New York charter was retired on August 28, 1961. In 1964, the company relocated to its present facility at 600 Abbott Drive Broomall, Pennsylvania.
As a result of a change in management, Bath Iron Works was reorganized in July, 1967. A new parent company, Bath Industries, Inc., was formed, and the Pennsylvania Crusher Division became the Pennsylvania Crusher Corporation (Delaware), a wholly-owned subsidiary. Bath Iron Works became another such subsidiary, and the change restored Pennsylvania Crusher’s control of its own business, with BIW reverting to the role of a job shop.
Following further diversification, Bath Industries, Inc., was renamed Congoleum Corporation on April 28, 1973, with Pennsylvania Crusher retaining its previous status. As its diversification program moved in other directions, Congoleum proceeded to divest itself of unrelated holdings. On July 29, 1976, Pennsylvania Crusher was sold to Penn Virginia Corporation, and a new Pennsylvania Crusher Corporation was incorporated in Pennsylvania as a wholly-owned PVC subsidiary. As this move deprived Pennsylvania Crusher of its manufacturing facilities at Bath, the reorganized firm acquired the plant of the Independent Machine Company in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, on November 15, 1976.
In the early 1980’s through a licensing agreement, PCC expanded its product line with the addition of the Penn Technic Screen. Nicknamed the Penn-Technic “Banana” due to its unusual side profile, the screen handles raw screening and pre-wet screening in a single multi-angle deck, a capability not found in conventional screens. PCC also acquired, in 1983, the rights to manufacture a number of crushers formerly produced by Kennedy Van Saun Corporation. KVS crushers were a logical extension to our product line that allows PCC to better serve the needs of the crushed stone and mining industries.
In mid-November 1986, a group of Pennsylvania Crusher’s top executives purchased the company through a leveraged buy-out. Since that time, PCC has become a pioneer in the development of material reduction equipment for fluid bed boiler installations with the addition of the FBR Reversible Hammermill and the BMR Brad Multi-Roll Crusher. These units were specifically developed to handle the fuels and sorbents needed for fluid bed boilers.
During 1992 three products were introduced: New SXCBG Hammermills were designed, manufactured and sold for the processing of western coal so that utilities are able to meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act; a CR Cage Mill, which is an improvement over traditional cage mills, and which is able to crush a wide variety of materials, particularly of varying hardnesses, was introduced to the marketplace; and a Clinker Grinder, which crushes the bottom ash that remains after coal has been burned, was developed based on the needs of a customer whose existing units were inefficient.
In late 1997, PCC began manufacturing and marketing Stamet® Posimetric® Feeder systems. These feeders are the world’s first commercial positive-displacement feeder, replacing both volumetric and gravimetric feeders in power plants and other applications for the feeding of bulk solid materials. Pennsylvania Crusher always looking to diversify its product line, purchased the Jeffrey Specialty Equipment Corporation of Woodruff, South Carolina in October 1999.
Jeffrey was originally part of the Jeffrey Manufacturing Company that was established in 1877. It manufactures a wide range of industrial hammermills for size reduction and vibrating feeders and conveyors for material handling. These products are used in industries such as pulp and paper, wood products manufacturing, waste wood recycling, coal and aggregate production, mining and many others. Jeffrey has been a leader in the supply of wood and bark hogs, with the largest number of installed machines in the industry. The most recent addition of Jeffrey’s product line is the patented Chip-Sizer™ machine that is revolutionizing the way that oversize wood chips are processed.
On January 2, 2003, K-Tron International, Inc. acquired Pennsylvania Crusher Corporation and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Jeffrey Specialty Equipment Corporation.
K-Tron and its subsidiaries design, produce, market and service material handling equipment and systems for a wide variety of industrial markets. K-Tron has manufacturing facilities in the United States, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Canada and its equipment is sold throughout the world. |
George W. Borton
William A. Battey
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