PLESSEY

'The Plessey Company plc' was a British-based international electronics, defence and telecommunications company.

Contents

Early history

The Clark connection

Aircraft components

WW II

Later history

GEC takeover bid

GEC Siemens takeover

GEC acquisitions

Siemens acquisitions

Jointly owned

Disposals

Subsequent history

Barcodes

Plessey barcodes

References

External link

Early history

The Plessey company was founded in 1917 in Marylebone, central London. The original shareholders were, Thomas Hurst Hodgson, C.H. Whitaker, Raymond Parker and his brother Plessey Parker. A talented German engineer, William Oscar Heyne was employed by the company. Heyne later became the Managing Director and President of Plessey and was one of the key figures in the development of Plessey during the 1920s and 30s. The company moved to Cottenham Road in Ilford early in 1919 (and then to Vicarage Lane where it remained). Most of the early work carried out by the company was mechanical engineering rather than electronics.
During the 1920s Plessey began to diversify into electrical manufacturing, important contracts included the manufacture of early radios for Marconi and the production of telephones for the GPO. In 1929 the television pioneer John Logie Baird had his first production televisions produced by Plessey. The company also produced the first British made portable battery radio in the same year.
The manufacture of electrical components also became a key area of growth for Plessey, a vast array of different components was manufactured by the company, many under licence from overseas companies. Plessey became one of the largest manufacturers in this field as the radio and television industries grew.

The Clark connection

An early customer of Plessey was a galvanising company called British Electro Chemists. One of that companies shareholders was Byron G. Clark, an American, who was also a business associate of T.H.Hodgson, one of the founders of Plessey. The Clark family would eventually dominate the management of Plessey for most of its History. Byron's son Allen George Clark joined the company in 1921, and went on to become a major driving force behind the development of Plessey, followed later by his sons John Clark, and Michael Clark, both of whom rose to prominent positions in the company.

Aircraft components

Aircraft components was another market into which Plessey diversified. In 1936 Plessey obtained a number of important manufacturing licences from American companies such as, Breeze Corporation for aircraft multi-pin electrical connectors, Federal Laboratories for Coffman starters (an explosive cartridge device used to start aircraft engines), and Pump Engineering Services Corporation for the manufacture of Pesco fuel pumps. Plessey went on to produce large numbers of Pesco fuel pumps for Rolls Royce Merlin engines, and in 1940 the fuel pump for Britains first jet engine was also supplied by Plessey.

WW II

During the war, Plessey produced a vast array of components and equipment for the war effort, including shell cases, aircraft parts, and radio equipment such as the R1155(receiver), and T1154(transmitter).
Following the bombing of its Ilford site, Plessey converted a section of tunnel built for a new extension to the London Underground Central Line, into a munitions factory. The company also built a new factory at Swindon, and opened several other shadow factories around the country. The wartime workforce of Plessey grew to over 10,000 people.

Later history

In 1961 Plessey merged with the British Ericsson Telephone Company, and the Automatic Telephone & Electric (AT&E), to become Britain's largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment including the majority of the country's crossbar switches.
Plessey were partners in the development of the Atlas Computer in 1962 and in the development of Digital telephone systems - ''System X'' - during the late 1970s. During the 1970s and early 1980s, Plessey manufactured a series of computer systems and peripherals compatible with Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-11.

GEC takeover bid

In December 1985 GEC launched a takeover bid for the Plessey Company, valuing the group at £1.2 billion. Both Plessey and the Ministry of Defence were against the merger, GEC and Plessey were the two largest suppliers to the MoD and in many tenders the only competitors. In January 1986 the bid was referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC), whose report published in August advised against the merger. The government concurred and blocked GEC's bid.
In 1988 Plessey and The General Electric Company (GEC) merged their telecom units to form 'GEC-Plessey Telecommunications' (GPT), the UK's leading telecommunications manufacturer.

GEC Siemens takeover

In 1988 GEC and Siemens AG set up a jointly held company, GEC Siemens plc, to launch a hostile takeover of Plessey. GEC Siemens' initial offer was made on 23 December 1988 valuing Plessey at £1.7 billion. Again Plessey rejected the offer and again it was referred to the MMC. The original proposal envisaged joint ownership of all of Plessey's defence businesses, with GPT and Plessey's North American businesses split in the ratios 60:40 and 51:49 respectively. The level of GEC's involvement in the Plessey defence businesses was not likely to meet with regulatory approval and in February GEC Siemens announced a new organisation. The takeover was completed in September 1989. In April 1990 GEC and Siemens agreed a new structure of ownership of the Plessey businesses:^[1]

GEC acquisitions

★ UK

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★ Plessey Aerospace

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★ Plessey Avionics

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★ Plessey Crypto

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★ Plessey Materials

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★ Plessey Naval Systems

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★ Plessey Semiconductors

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★ Plessey Research Caswell

★ North America

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★ Plessey Aero Precision Corp

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★ Plessey Dynamics Corp

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★ Plessey Electronic Systems Corp (including ES Marine Systems)

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★ Sippican Inc

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★ Plessey Materials Inc

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★ Leigh Instruments

Siemens acquisitions

★ Siemens Plessey Radar

★ Siemens Plessey Defence Systems

★ Siemens Plessey Controls

★ Siemens Plessey Australia

★ Roke Manor Research Limited

Jointly owned

★ GEC-Plessey Telecommunications (GPT): 60% GEC and 40% Siemens

Disposals

★ Birkby Plastics

★ Hoskyns Group

★ Plessey Spa (Italy)

★ 51% share in Plessey Telenet acquired by minority partner in 1992.

Subsequent history

In 1997 British Aerospace and Daimler-Benz Aerospace acquired the UK operations and German part of Siemens Plessey Systems, respectively. In 1999 Siemens acquired GEC's interests in Siemens Plessey. GEC acquired Siemens' 40% interest in GPT the same year, renaming it Marconi Communications.
GEC Plessey Semiconductors (GPS) was purchased by Mitel Semiconductors of Canada in 1998. After a number of downsizes, including the power semiconductor and silicon on sapphire operation at Lincoln, Lincolnshire being purchased in January 2000 by Dynex Semicoductor Ltd, the company renamed itself Zarlink Semiconductor in 2001. The GPS fab in Plymouth was acquired by Xfab and still houses a small Zarlink test facility.
In August 1998 Plessey was bought by Dimension Data and World-wide African Investment Holdings for R1.6Billion, they retained BSW Data, Plessey Solutions and Communications Systems. The remaining divisions were bought back by a combined management buyout supported by Rand Merchant Bank. The corporate name was changed to Tellumat Pty Ltd. Tellumat continues to manufacture Plessey products as before. Dimension Data markets the telecommunications-only products in Africa, and Tellumat market all Plessey products world-wide, excluding African telecommunications products.

Barcodes

Plessey barcodes

The name is also used to refer to a barcode symbology developed by Plessey, which is still used in some libraries and for shelf tags in retail stores, in part as a solution to their internal requirement for stock control. The system was first used in the early 1970's by J.Sainsbury to identify all of its products on supermarket shelves for its product restocking system. The chief advantages are the relative ease of printing using the dot-matrix printers popular at the time of the code's introduction, and its somewhat higher density than the more common 2 of 5 and 3 of 9 codes.
Plessey barcodes use two bar widths. Whitespace between bars is not significant. The start element is a wide bar, and the stop element is two narrow bars. In between, the bars are in groups of four. High order bars appear leftmost. Narrow bars are zero and wide bars are 1.
This symbology is not self checking, though a modulo 10 or modulo 11 checksum (depending on application) is usually appended.

References

1. The Plessey Carve-up

External link

★ History of Plessey

★ Plessey history