21 Facts About Ferranti

Ferranti or Ferranti International plc was a UK electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century from 1885 until it went bankrupt in 1993.

Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti established his first business Ferranti, Thompson and Ince in 1882.

Ferranti focused on alternating current power distribution early on, and was one of the few UK experts.

Ferranti designed the building, the generating plant and the distribution system and on its completion in October 1890, it was the first truly modern power station.

Ferranti spent much of this period working in partnership with the likes of J P Coats of Paisley on cotton spinning machinery and Vickers on re-superheating turbines.

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In 1910, Dr Ferranti made a presidential speech to the IEE addressing this issue, but it would be another sixteen years before the commencement of the National Grid in 1926.

Ferranti wanted to get involved in the manufacture of shells and fuzes but it wasn't until 1915 that he finally convinced the board to accept this.

In 1935, Ferranti purchased a disused wire drawing mill at Moston: from here it manufactured many "brown goods" such as televisions, radios, and electric clocks.

Ferranti later sold its radio and television interests to EKCO in 1957.

Production of clocks ended in 1957 and other product lines phased out in 1960 Ferranti Instruments, based at Moston, developed various items for scientific measurements, including one of the first cone and plate viscometers.

Ferranti built a new power transformer works at Hollinwood in the mid 1950s at a time when there was growth in the power supply distribution industry.

In 1943, Ferranti opened a factory at Crewe Toll in Edinburgh to manufacture gyro gunsights for the Spitfire aircraft.

From 1949, Ferranti-Packard assisted the Royal Canadian Navy develop DATAR.

Ferranti produced the PADS, an inertial navigation system which could be mounted in a vehicle and was used by the British Army.

In 1970, Ferranti became involved in the sonar field through its involvement with Plessey in a new series of sonars, for which it designed and built the computer subsystems.

Circa 1956, Ivan Idelson, at Ferranti, originated the Cluff–Foster–Idelson coding of characters on 7-track paper tape for a BSI committee.

Ferranti offered the result commercially as the Mercury starting in 1957, and eventually sold nineteen in total.

Ferranti continued their collaboration with the University of Manchester, and Plessey Co.

Ferranti had been involved in the production of electronic devices, including radio valves, cathode-ray tubes and germanium semiconductors for some time before it became the first European company to produce a silicon diode, in 1955.

In 1987 Ferranti purchased International Signal and Control, a United States defence contractor based in Pennsylvania.

Ferranti has over 200 employees that manufacture BT's public phones, oil pumps for large industrial vehicles, electric motors for motorbility solutions, electronics, and small MOD equipment.