Founded in 1838, George Kent Ltd was initially a manufacturer of household gadgets, then a manufacturer of munitions during

World War One World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, and became the largest British manufacturer of instruments for

Industrial control system An industrial control system (ICS) is an electronic control system and associated instrumentation used for industrial process control. Control systems can range in size from a few modular panel-mounted controllers to large interconnected and in ...

s, prior to its acquisition by

Brown Boveri Brown, Boveri & Cie. (Brown, Boveri & Company; BBC) was a Swiss group of electrical engineering companies. It was founded in Zürich, in 1891 by Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown and Walter Boveri who worked at the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon. In 1970 ...

in 1974.

Corporate history

The company was founded in 1838. The company was incorporated as a

Limited Company In a limited company, the liability of members or subscribers of the company is limited to what they have invested or guaranteed to the company. Limited companies may be limited by Share (finance), shares or by guarantee. In a company limited by ...

in 1907, and was managed by the founder's son Walter George Kent.

World War One

During World War One, Kent's had a factory in

Luton Luton () is a town and unitary authority with borough status, in Bedfordshire, England. At the 2011 census, the Luton built-up area subdivision had a population of 211,228 and its built-up area, including the adjacent towns of Dunstable an ...

with over 3,000 workers, mostly

Munitionette Munitionettes were British women employed in munitions factories during the time of the First World War. History Early in the war, the United Kingdom's munitions industry found itself having difficulty producing the amount of weapons and ammuniti ...

s, in this case producing fuses for

artillery shells A shell, in a military context, is a projectile whose payload contains an explosive, incendiary, or other chemical filling. Originally it was called a bombshell, but "shell" has come to be unambiguous in a military context. Modern usage so ...

. They were producing 140,000 shell fuses a week. After the war, this grew to 5,000 workers.

International growth

George Kent grew to have significant reach worldwide, including establishing a subsidiary in Malaysia in 1936. Currently, as an independent organisation, the Malaysian company George Kent provide engineering and metering solutions in South-East Asia, with a diverse set of activities including the integration of railways and the manufacture of water meters.

Acquisitions and George Kent Group

In 1968, George Kent Ltd acquired Fielden Electronics and

Cambridge Instrument Company Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company was a company founded in the late 1870s by Robert Fulcher. The original use of the company was to service instruments for the Cambridge physiology department. In the beginning, the company was financially dri ...

forming the

George Kent Group Founded in 1838, George Kent Ltd was initially a manufacturer of household gadgets, then a manufacturer of munitions during World War One, and became the largest British manufacturer of instruments for Industrial control systems, prior to its acq ...

. This was the UK's largest industrial instrument manufacturer.

Tony Benn Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British politician, writer and diarist who served as a Cabinet of the United Kingdom, Cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. ...

Minister of Technology The Ministry of Technology was a department of the government of the United Kingdom, sometimes abbreviated as "MinTech". The Ministry of Technology was established by the incoming government of Harold Wilson in October 1964 as part of Wilson's am ...

answered questions about the Cambridge Instruments takeover in

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

Fielden Electronics

Fielden Electronics of

Wythenshawe Wythenshawe () is a district of the city of Manchester, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in Cheshire, Wythenshawe was transferred in 1931 to the City of Manchester, which had begun building a massive housing estate there in the ...

, Manchester produced a data recorder known as the ''Servograph'' and a capacitance-sensing ''proximity meter'' alongside a variety of

scientific instruments A scientific instrument is a device or tool used for scientific purposes, including the study of both natural phenomena and theoretical research. History Historically, the definition of a scientific instrument has varied, based on usage, laws, an ...

and

process control An industrial process control in continuous production processes is a discipline that uses industrial control systems to achieve a production level of consistency, economy and safety which could not be achieved purely by human manual control. I ...

devices. These included the ''bikini'' temperature controller, a temperature recorder, and the ''E296'' level controller.

Acquisition by Brown Boveri

An acquisition in 1974 of George Kent Group by Swiss instrument company

caused a rename to ''Brown Boveri Kent''. At the same time, the company ''Scientific and Medical Instruments'' was spun-out which eventually became ''Cambridge Instrument Company,'' resurrecting that brand. Brown Boveri eventually merged with

ASEA ''Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget'' (English translation: General Swedish Electrical Limited Company; Swedish abbreviation: ASEA) was a Swedish industrial company. History ASEA was founded in 1883 by Ludvig Fredholm in Västerås as ...

and is today the industrial giant

ABB ABB Ltd. is a Swedish- Swiss multinational corporation headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland. The company was formed in 1988 when Sweden's Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget (ASEA) and Switzerland's Brown, Boveri & Cie merged to create ...

Notable products

Domestic equipment

Kent's breakthrough product was a knife sharpener, first available around 1850. Later products included an ice cabinet, being a well-insulated damp-proof box suitable for storing meat and dairy products; a miniaturised one appeared in

Queen Mary's Dolls' House Queen Mary's Dolls' House is a dollhouse built in the early 1920s, completed in 1924, for Queen Mary, the wife of King George V. It was designed by architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, with contributions from many notable artists and craftsmen of the ...

Industrial instrumentation

Early Kent industrial products include water flow meters. The company motto was "From drops to rivers". Power cylinders were first manufactured in the 1950s in Luton. These are a type of

linear actuator A linear actuator is an actuator that creates motion in a straight line, in contrast to the circular motion of a conventional electric motor. Linear actuators are used in machine tools and industrial machinery, in computer Peripheral, periphera ...

featuring a

control loop A control loop is the fundamental building block of industrial control systems. It consists of all the physical components and control functions necessary to automatically adjust the value of a measured process variable (PV) to equal the value of ...

where the position of the actuator is governed by some input pressure signal. Power cylinders continue to be manufactured, alongside similar linear actuators featuring digital control technology.

Other items

Kent's produced the

clear view screen A clear view screen or clearview screen is a glass disk mounted in a window that rotates to disperse rain, spray, and snow. A clear view screen is typically driven by an electric motor at the center of the disk, and is often heated to prevent con ...

, a spinning transparent panel that provided visibility in wet weather. Kent also produced avionic equipment, including aircraft fuel gauges and fuel flow meters.

References

{{reflist ABB British companies established in 1838 Companies based in London