The Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense Company (formerly The Ensign-Bickford Company) is a manufacturer of hardware and energetic systems for use in spacecraft, military, and industrial applications. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ensign-Bickford Industries.

History

The Ensign-Bickford Company (EBCo) was started in 1836 in Simsbury, Connecticut as a manufacturer of William Bickford's safety fuse for use in

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...

. Safety fuse was a great advance in mining technology over the practice of filling holes with black powder. The next step in mining technology was

detonating cord Detonating cord (also called detonation cord, detacord, detcord, primer cord, or sun cord) is a thin, flexible plastic tube usually filled with pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN, pentrite). With the PETN exploding at a rate of approximately ...

. Ensign-Bickford and other companies developed different versions of detonating cord. In 1937, Ensign-Bickford trademarked "

Primacord Primacord is a brand of detonating cord used in blasting. The registered trademark Primacord was originally owned by the Ensign-Bickford Company; Ensign-Bickford sold the trademark to Dyno Nobel in 2003, who manufacture it in their Graham, Kent ...

", which became the functional generic name for detonating cord in North America. In May 2003, Ensign-Bickford sold the

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from othe ...

s and processes to

Dyno Nobel Dyno Nobel is a manufacturer of explosives. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Incitec Pivot Limited operating in Australia, Canada, the United States, Africa, Indonesia, Mexico, South America, Papua New Guinea and Turkey. They provide the ...

Inc of Australia (formerly of

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

). In 1956, EBCo began providing research and development work for

Frankford Arsenal The Frankford Arsenal is a former United States Army ammunition plant located adjacent to the Bridesburg neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, north of the original course of Frankford Creek. History Opened in 1816 on of land p ...

and

Sandia National Laboratories Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), also known as Sandia, is one of three research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Headquartered in Kirtland Air Force Bas ...

to develop linear shaped charge, a product critical to the early strategic missile and launch vehicle programs. In 1965, the Space Ordnance Division was formed, making contributions to early NASA programs such as Mercury,

Gemini Gemini may refer to: Space * Gemini (constellation), one of the constellations of the zodiac ** Gemini in Chinese astronomy * Project Gemini, the second U.S. crewed spaceflight program * Gemini Observatory, consisting of telescopes in the Norther ...

, and

Apollo Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label= Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label ...

. In 1987, the Space Ordnance Division became Ensign-Bickford Aerospace Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of EBCo, later becoming The Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense Company.

Locations

In addition to its headquarters and manufacturing operations in Simsbury, Connecticut, EBAD has facilities in

Graham, Kentucky Graham is a census-designated place (CDP) located in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, United States. History A post office was established in the community in 1904. Graham was named for William Graham Duncan, the Scottish-American owner of the W. G. ...

Moorpark Moorpark is a city in Ventura County in Southern California. Moorpark was founded in 1900. The town grew from just over 4,000 citizens in 1980 to over 25,000 by 1990. As of 2006, Moorpark was one of the fastest-growing cities in Ventura County.. ...

and

San Rafael, California San Rafael ( ; Spanish for " St. Raphael", ) is a city and the county seat of Marin County, California, United States. The city is located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's populatio ...

Acquisitions

References

External links

Corporate website

The Talk of Simsbury: Ensign Bickford Industries
- Interview with Tom Perlitz, President and CEO of Ensign Bickford Industries, Inc. Simsbury, Connecticut Manufacturing companies based in Connecticut Explosives manufacturers Companies based in Hartford County, Connecticut {{US-manufacturing-company-stub