Graviner is a British engineering company that makes oxygen (life support) and fire extinguishing systems for civil and military aircraft. The name is a

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and

inertia Inertia is the idea that an object will continue its current motion until some force causes its speed or direction to change. The term is properly understood as shorthand for "the principle of inertia" as described by Newton in his first law ...

History

The company was independently operational from 1933 to 1980 and is now a component of United Technologies Corporation (UTC).

Explosion suppression

In the 1930s, as the Graviner Manufacturing Company in Gosport, it made the Graviner Extinguisher, an explosion-suppression system, which operated to prevent fuel from catching fire in an aircraft crash. The system deployed the compound carbon tetrachloride, the forerunner to the modern gaseous extinguishing agents collectively referred to as '' Halon''.

Fire detection

In the early 1950s it made a product called ''Graviner Firewire'' which detected fires onboard aircraft. The company was now based in Buckinghamshire. In July 1966 it won the contract to provide fire detection and suppression systems for

Concorde The Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde () is a retired Franco-British supersonic airliner jointly developed and manufactured by Sud Aviation (later Aérospatiale) and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC). Studies started in 1954, and France an ...

. It also made fire detection systems for marine craft; it makes a well-known

oil mist Oil mist refers to oil droplets suspended in the air in the size range 1~10 μm. Formation of Oil Mist Oil mist may form when high pressure fuel oil, lubricating oil, hydraulic oil, or other oil is sprayed through a narrow crack, or when l ...

detector. In 1983 it provided the fire detection and suppression systems for the world land speed record car

Thrust2 Thrust2 is a British designed and built jet propelled car, which held the world land speed record from 4 October 1983 to 25 September 1997. The Thrust2 is powered by a single Rolls-Royce Avon jet engine sourced from an English Electric Light ...

. In 1984 it introduced the world's first microprocessor-controlled engine fire detection system. By the 1980s, half of the world's Boeing 747s carried its technology. In 1991 it won a contract to provide the fire detection systems for the experimental

Lockheed YF-22 The Lockheed/Boeing/General Dynamics YF-22 is an American single-seat, twin-engine fighter aircraft technology demonstrator designed for the United States Air Force (USAF). The design was a finalist in the USAF's Advanced Tactical Fighter c ...

, which subsequently evolved many years later into the

Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is an American single-seat, twin-engine, all-weather stealth tactical fighter aircraft developed for the United States Air Force (USAF). As the result of the USAF's Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program, th ...

, entering service with the USAF around 2006.

Nuclear energy

By the early 1960s it had a nuclear energy division.

Ownership

In the 1980s it was owned by Allegheny International. By the 1980s it was part of the same group as a similar company, Deugra, based near

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second- ...

. It was bought, with Deugra, for £24m in 1986 by RHP Group ( bearings). By the late 1980s, RHP Group had become Pilgrim House Group. The company is now part of United Technologies Corporation (UTC). The business at Colnbrook closed on 21 December 2017. Production was transferred to a sister company, L'Hotellier in Paris.John O'Brien, Technical Manager, Kidde Graviner

References