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John Inglis and Company

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John Inglis and Company
IndustryManufacturing
Founded1859 (1859) (as Mair, Inglis and Evatt)
1937 (1937) (as John Inglis and Company)
FateAcquired by Whirlpool in 1987,
then changed its name in 2001. Today name retained as a brand of appliances sold in Canada.
SuccessorWhirlpool Canada
Headquarters
Canada
Websitewww.inglis.ca

John Inglis and Company was a Canadian manufacturing firm which made weapons for the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth military forces during the World War II era, then later became a major appliance manufacturer. Whirlpool Corporation acquired control of Inglis in 1987 and changed the company's name to Whirlpool Canada in 2001. Today the Inglis name survives as a brand under Whirlpool.

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United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is 242,495 square kilometres (93,628 sq mi), with an estimated 2023 population of over 68 million people.

Commonwealth of Nations

Commonwealth of Nations

The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the Commonwealth Secretariat, which focuses on intergovernmental aspects, and the Commonwealth Foundation, which focuses on non-governmental relations among member states. Numerous organisations are associated with and operate within the Commonwealth.

World War II

World War II

World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a global conflict that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries, including all of the great powers, fought as part of two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. Many participants threw their economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind this total war, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and the delivery of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war.

Major appliance

Major appliance

A major appliance, also known as a large domestic appliance or large electric appliance or simply a large appliance, large domestic, or large electric, is a non-portable or semi-portable machine used for routine housekeeping tasks such as cooking, washing laundry, or food preservation. Such appliances are sometimes collectively known as white goods, as the products were traditionally white in colour, although a variety of colours are now available. An appliance is different from a plumbing fixture because it uses electricity or fuel.

Whirlpool Corporation

Whirlpool Corporation

The Whirlpool Corporation is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of home appliances, headquartered in Benton Charter Township, Michigan, United States. The Fortune 500 company has annual revenue of approximately $21 billion, 78,000 employees, and more than 70 manufacturing and technology research centers globally.

History

The company traces its roots to John Inglis who was involved in early enterprises in Dundas and Guelph, Ontario. On 27 July 1859, he, Thomas Mair and Francis Evatt formed Mair, Inglis and Evatt, a machine shop in Guelph, Ontario, that produced machinery for grist and flour mills.[1] In 1864, they added a steam engine to power the machines. Some time after 1864, Daniel Hunter replaced Thomas Mair, and the name of the business was changed to Inglis and Hunter.[2]

In September 1881, Inglis purchased a large triangular plot of land near downtown Toronto, west of Strachan Avenue. He moved the company (and his residence) there, renaming it John Inglis and Sons after five of his sons that worked in various departments. John Inglis died in 1898 and is buried at Woodlawn Memorial Park in Guelph. The business was taken over by one of his sons, William (b. 1868). In 1903, William Inglis led the company into the manufacture of marine steam engines and waterworks pumping engines, and he discontinued production of its previous milling product line. The company produced the engines for the Canada Steamship Lines ships Hamonic and Huronic, which served until 1950.[2]

The company reincorporated in 1913 as the John Inglis Company Limited. During World War I, the company turned out thousands of shells and shell forgings, and more than 40 steam marine engines for freighters. Among products manufactured in the 1920s were boilers, grain elevating and conveying machinery, hydraulic turbines, tugs, and reciprocating and centrifugal pumps.

The Great Depression seriously affected the company and led to major losses during the 1930s. When William died in 1935, the company went into receivership. A new Toronto Island ferry built by the company was named after him shortly after his death.

Workers assemble Browning Hi-Power pistols at the Inglis munitions plant in Toronto, April 1944
Workers assemble Browning Hi-Power pistols at the Inglis munitions plant in Toronto, April 1944

In 1937, the company was purchased by Major J. E. Hahn of Toronto, owner of British Canadian Engineering Limited, who took on the name John Inglis and Company. In March 1938, the company won a contract with the British and Canadian governments to supply 5,000 Bren machine guns to Great Britain and 7,000 to Canada. Both countries shared the capital costs of creating a factory to produce them. Inglis started production in 1940, and the contracts were extended several times. By 1943, they were producing 60% of the Bren machine guns destined for the British Commonwealth forces, and 30% of the British Army's own requirements. They also produced a large proportion of the Polsten 20 mm autocannon for the British Commonwealth, as well as the Browning Hi-Power (or High Power) pistol for both the Commonwealth nations and other Canadian allies (primarily the Nationalist Chinese Army).[3][4] They also produced the machinery for four Tribal-class destroyers.

After the war, Inglis entered the consumer products business, producing fishing tackle, house trailers, oil burner pumps and domestic heaters and stoves. In 1946, they licensed production of a wringer washer being manufactured in the US by the Nineteen Hundred Corporation (now Whirlpool Corporation). A fully automatic washer was added in 1950, and the line continued to expand to include electric and gas dryers, and dishwashers.

Early in 1945, the company had acquired a controlling interest in the English Electric Company of Canada in St. Catharines, Ontario, which became a wholly owned subsidiary in 1947. In 1951, they completed a new plant in Scarborough, Ontario to produce the English Electric Yarrows-100 naval steam turbine under license for Canadian destroyers, including the St. Laurent and Restigouche classes. The plant was purchased by English Electric in 1955 and leased back to Inglis. Inglis later built a new addition to house the former St. Catharines works, which were shut down.

In 1962, Inglis purchased the Scarborough plant back from the English Electric. However, three years later, they sold it off to General Electric Canada, and in 1966 sold off a majority of their shares in English Electric Canada to its UK parent in order to concentrate on the consumer products field exclusively.

By 1966, Inglis had become the leading producer of Canadian-built laundry machines. In 1967, a refrigerator plant was opened in Stoney Creek, Ontario, and production of dehumidifiers was added there in 1970. In 1972, Inglis produced its one-millionth automatic washer and began manufacturing and selling appliances under the Whirlpool brand name. A year later, the company began operating under the name Inglis Limited. New operations were opened in Laval, Quebec, in the late 1970s, along with expansions of their Toronto operations. In 1982, Inglis purchased parts of Canadian Admiral Corporation, and sold some of their appliances under that name.

In 1981, the company moved its head office to Mississauga, Ontario, and starting the next year, the downtown Toronto operations were slowly sold off. As of 2010, the former location on Strachan Avenue, along with the nearby Massey Ferguson plants, were being redeveloped as housing and commercial space. Until July 2014, all that remained was the landmark giant blue and white Inglis billboard, installed in 1975 on a small part of one of the old buildings not demolished. It was aimed at the Gardiner Expressway and frequently flashed inspirational quotes to passing motorists.[5] The sign was removed in July 2014 after Whirlpool and Pattison Outdoor Advertising decided that condo buildings were obscuring the view of the sign and it was no longer viable.[6]

Fate

Whirlpool Corporation acquired a majority interest of Inglis in 1987 and changed the company's name to Whirlpool Canada in 2001. "Inglis" is now a brand of household appliances from Whirlpool marketed primarily in Canada. In the United States, Inglis appliances are sold at Best Buy stores.[7]

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Dundas, Ontario

Dundas, Ontario

Dundas is a community and town in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. It is nicknamed the Valley Town because of its topographical location at the bottom of the Niagara Escarpment on the western edge of Lake Ontario. The population has been stable for decades at about twenty thousand, largely because it has not annexed rural land from the protected Dundas Valley Conservation Area.

Machine shop

Machine shop

A machine shop or engineering workshop (UK) is a room, building, or company where machining, a form of subtractive manufacturing, is done. In a machine shop, machinists use machine tools and cutting tools to make parts, usually of metal or plastic. A machine shop can be a small business or a portion of a factory, whether a toolroom or a production area for manufacturing. The building construction and the layout of the place and equipment vary, and are specific to the shop; for instance, the flooring in one shop may be concrete, or even compacted dirt, and another shop may have asphalt floors. A shop may be air-conditioned or not; but in other shops it may be necessary to maintain a controlled climate. Each shop has its own tools and machinery which differ from other shops in quantity, capability and focus of expertise.

Guelph

Guelph

Guelph is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Known as The Royal City, it is roughly 22 km (14 mi) east of Kitchener and 70 km (43 mi) west of Downtown Toronto, at the intersection of Highway 6, Highway 7 and Wellington County Road 124. It is the seat of Wellington County, but is politically independent of it.

Steam engine

Steam engine

A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be transformed, by a connecting rod and crank, into rotational force for work. The term "steam engine" is generally applied only to reciprocating engines as just described, not to the steam turbine. Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separated from the combustion products. The ideal thermodynamic cycle used to analyze this process is called the Rankine cycle. In general usage, the term steam engine can refer to either complete steam plants, such as railway steam locomotives and portable engines, or may refer to the piston or turbine machinery alone, as in the beam engine and stationary steam engine.

Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anchor of the Golden Horseshoe, an urban agglomeration of 9,765,188 people surrounding the western end of Lake Ontario, while the Greater Toronto Area proper had a 2021 population of 6,712,341. Toronto is an international centre of business, finance, arts, sports and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.

Canada Steamship Lines

Canada Steamship Lines

Canada Steamship Lines (CSL) is a shipping company with headquarters in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The business has been operating for well over a century and a half.

Hamonic (steamship)

Hamonic (steamship)

Hamonic was a passenger vessel designed for service on the Great Lakes. She was launched in 1909, and served until she burned, in a catastrophic fire, at Sarnia, Ontario, on July 17, 1945. However, unlike the catastrophic fire that struck her sister ship, Noronic, in 1949, where 119 passengers died, all of Hamonic's passengers and crew survived.

Huronic (steamship)

Huronic (steamship)

Huronic was part of a fleet of passenger vessels built for service on the Great Lakes. She was designed by Hugh Calderwood, Manager of Collingwood Shipbuilding. She was retired in late 1949, a few months after her sister ship, Noronic, had a catastrophic fire, at her moorings, in Toronto, Ontario, killing 119 of her passengers. She was launched, in Collingwood, Ontario, in 1901.

Centrifugal pump

Centrifugal pump

Centrifugal pumps are used to transport fluids by the conversion of rotational kinetic energy to the hydrodynamic energy of the fluid flow. The rotational energy typically comes from an engine or electric motor. They are a sub-class of dynamic axisymmetric work-absorbing turbomachinery. The fluid enters the pump impeller along or near to the rotating axis and is accelerated by the impeller, flowing radially outward into a diffuser or volute chamber (casing), from which it exits.

Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression (1929–1939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagion began around September and led to the Wall Street stock market crash of October 24. It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century.

Browning Hi-Power

Browning Hi-Power

The Browning Hi-Power is a single-action, semi-automatic pistol available in the 9×19mm Parabellum and .40 S&W calibers. It was based on a design by American firearms inventor John Browning, and completed by Dieudonné Saive at FN Herstal. Browning died in 1926, several years before the design was finalized. FN Herstal named it the "High Power" in allusion to the 13-round magazine capacity, almost twice that of other designs at the time, such as the Luger or Colt M1911.

National Revolutionary Army

National Revolutionary Army

The National Revolutionary Army, sometimes shortened to Revolutionary Army (革命軍) before 1928, and as National Army (國軍) after 1928, was the military arm of the Kuomintang from 1925 until 1947 in China. It also became the regular army of the Republican era during the KMT's period of party rule beginning in 1928. It was renamed the Republic of China Armed Forces after the 1947 Constitution, which instituted civilian control of the military.

Source: "John Inglis and Company", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, February 18th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Inglis_and_Company.

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References
  1. ^ "The Inglis Story" Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine, Whirlpool Canada
  2. ^ a b "Business and History - John Inglis Co. Limited" Archived 2010-01-12 at the Wayback Machine, Industrial Canada, May 1967
  3. ^ Grande Puissance: The FN Browning Hi-Power
  4. ^ CANADA TO REPLACE 1940S BROWNING HI-POWERS WITH NEW PISTOL
  5. ^ "Toronto's Inspiring Inglis Sign Dismantled After Nearly 40 Years", Toronto Star, accessed August 4, 2014.
  6. ^ "Toronto's iconic Inglis billboard is no more". CBC News.
  7. ^ "Inglis by Whirlpool", bestbuy
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