: ''For the radioactive mineral, see
Cleveite
Cleveite is an impure radioactive variety of uraninite containing uranium, found in Norway. It has the composition UO2 with about 10% of the uranium substituted by rare-earth elements. It was named after Swedish chemist Per Teodor Cleve.
Cleve ...
.''
Clevite, Inc. was a
Cleveland
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...
,
Ohio
Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...
based manufacturing company, founded as the Cleveland Graphite Bronze Company. The company was a leading producer of
Babbit bearings and a significant US government defense contractor. The bearings were licensed in Britain to
Vandervell Products Ltd;
W. A. Robotham of Rolls-Royce said that "it was an exceedingly difficult task for
Tony Vandervell ... knowing the American company well".
In 1952 the Cleveland Graphite Bronze Company absorbed the
Brush Development Company and Brush Labs in a merger. In 1953 it acquired 51% of Transistor Products Inc., and with other acquisitions such as the German ''Intermetall'' in 1955 (a company founded in 1952 by pioneering German physicist and developer of the first "European"
transistor
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch electrical signals and electric power, power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semicondu ...
Herbert Mataré, and subsequently sold to
telecommunications
Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...
giant
ITT in 1965) developed a
semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...
division.
By 1959, over one-third of Clevite's sales were in electronics, split over four units: Clevite Transistor Prods.; Brush Instruments; Clevite Electronic Components; and Clevite Ordnance. Clevite won defense contracts for some of its products and opened a new ordnance plant in 1967.
[Clevite Corp., ''Encyclopedia of Cleveland History'', Case-Western Reserve University]
/ref> Clevite purchased Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory
Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, later known as Shockley Transistor Corporation, was a pioneering semiconductor developer founded by William Shockley, and funded by Beckman Instruments, Inc., in 1955. It was the first high technology compan ...
in 1960 and continued operating it until selling it (again to ITT as it had done with Intermetall) in 1968.
In 1969, Clevite was acquired by Gould-National Batteries,History of Cleveland Graphite Bronze
/ref> a firm one-quarter its size. It adopted the Gould name in the hopes of having better brand recognition in the marketplace.[
]
References
External links
Company history from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland
{{manufacturing-company-stub
Manufacturing companies based in Cleveland