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Our History |
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Linde has a long history of growth and innovation that is characteristic of the company’s founding father himself, Carl von Linde.
Carl von Linde was a multifaceted engineer and scientist who is credited with patenting the world’s first refrigerator in 1877. He founded Gesellschaft fur Linde’s Eismachinen, now known as Linde, in Wiesbaden in in 1879.
Based on his innovative work related to the “process for liquefaction of air or other gases,” von Linde awarded another patent in 1895. He was among the first in the world to produce large volumes of liquid air, and in 1902 began constructing his first air separation unit (ASU), of which Linde has constructed over 2,700 around the world to-date.
Linde has grown dramatically throughout the years, both organically and via acquisition. As a result of the most recent acquisition, that of The BOC Group, in 2006, the company now has gases and engineering sales of approximately 12 billion euros and more than 51,000 employees working in around 70 countries throughout the world. |
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Brin's Oxygen Company, Ltd. was formed in 1886 by Arthur and Leon Brin. In the early days they manufactured oxygen using a high temperature barium oxide process developed from work by French scientist Jean Baptiste Boussingault. The main application for gaseous oxygen at this time was in connection with the limelight light sources used in magic lanterns and theatre lighting. A major new market emerged around 1903 with the development of the oxyacetylene welding process. Around the same time, new cryogenic air separation processes based on work by Carl Von Linde and others replaced the barium oxide process, paving the way for larger scale and more efficient production.
The company became the British Oxygen Company in 1906 and grew nationally and internationally through the following decades. In 1975 the company officially became BOC International Ltd, reflecting its success in developing business outside of Britain, and in products beyond oxygen.
At the time of the acquisition by Linde in September 2006, BOC Gases was a leading global supplier of compressed and bulk gases, chemicals and equipment. Through the years the company’s gases and problem solving capabilities have contributed to advances in many industries and aspects of everyday life, including steel-making, refining, chemical processing, environmental protection, wastewater treatment, welding and cutting, food processing and distribution, glass production, electronics and health care.
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AGA AB was started in 1904 near Stockholm, Sweden, by Gustaf Dalen, a 35-year-old engineer and ingenious inventor. The very next year AGA developed an automatic lighthouse mechanism that included the sun valve and the intermittent light regulator (the first innovations patented by AGA). Acetylene, with its bright light, was an excellent fuel for lighthouses, but it was too expensive when burned all day. AGA's intermittent light regulator reduced fuel consumption by 90 percent, and the sun valve cut consumption by another 4 percent. This meant lighthouses could be operated at a low cost and left unattended for long periods of time. In 1912, AGA won a contract to build a lighthouse system for the Panama Canal and Dalen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his inventions in lighthouse technology.
In 1911, AGA founded American Gas Accumulator Co. in New Jersey and in ensuing years many lighthouses were installed around the Great Lakes. Although AGA's stock in American Gas Accumulator Co. was sold in 1949, new operations had been established in other fields in the United States. In the mid-1970s, AGA acquired Frigoscandia, specializing in frozen food storage and distribution, and its U.S. subsidiary Frigoscandia Contracting Inc. became the American market leader in food freezing equipment. AGA acquired Burdox Inc., a local gas company in Cleveland, in 1978, and during the 1980s, invested more than $100 million in new gas operations. By 2003, the U.S. AGA operation employed over 1,300 individuals in over 75 locations, including the corporate office, six air separation plants, a specialty gas plant, six hub production/distribution facilities, a technical center and 60 branches. |
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In 1980, Hoek Loos, the largest manufacturer and distributor of industrial and medical gases in Holland, acquired Welding Products of Georgia, an Atlanta-based distributor founded in 1967. At the time of the acquisition, the company had 50 employees and annual sales of $6 million. Nearly a year later Hoek Loos more than doubled its investment in the U.S. by acquiring another Atlanta-based distributor and changed the name of the new company to Holox.
Until 1996 Holox was strictly a distributor, but it evolved into an integrated gas products company with over 1,000 employees. By 2003, the Holox network extended throughout 12 southeastern states serving customers from Virginia to Texas. In addition to 65 sales and distribution locations, Holox operated 5 air separation plants with a total liquefaction capacity of 980 tons per day, 11 cylinder fill plants, 4 acetylene and 2 scientific gas plants, 1 hydrogen and 2 dry ice plants |
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