Page 12 - Champion Get the Facts booklets

Cooper Industries
- A History

8
When the Champion company was taken over by Cooper

Industries in 1989 it was to have an enormous impact on the

way in which the company was structured in Europe.

1833 The C.&E. Cooper Company
is founded

1869 Like Champion, Cooper Industries was founded by two brothers,
Charles and Elias Cooper, who began making iron pots,
ploughshares and stoves out of a one horse-powered foundry in
Mount Vernon, Ohio.

Licence to manufacture the
Corliss engine is granted

1919 By the mid 1860's the company was manufacturing steam
engines and heavy machinery for the agricultural, textile and
lumber markets. Under licence, it made the Corliss engine which
was capable of powering a whole factory, such as a textile or
rolling mill and, in 1875, produced the first self-propelled, steam-
powered farm tractor.

The C & G Cooper Company is
incorporated in Ohio

1929 As steam power gave way to oil and gas, Cooper moved naturally
into manufacturing natural gas internal combustion engines and,
in 1919, was incorporated in Ohio as the C & G Cooper Company.

Cooper merges with The Bessemer
Gas Engine Company

Cooper merged with the Bessemer Gas Engine company to form
The Cooper-Bessemer Corporation, the largest builder of gas engines
and compressors in America. The Cooper-Bessemer Corporation was
floated on the American stock exchange in 1944.