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Visit PilkingtonTV. Digital Signage Extra-clear glass for touch screens and digital signage. By then Lawrence Pilkington--Harry Pilkington's brother--and Arthur Pilkington, after five years as a regular officer in the Coldstream Guards, had entered the company and joined the executive committee in the s, followed by a much younger member, David Pilkington, born in This team was to succeed more spectacularly than any of its predecessors.
When PB closed its Maubeuge factory in , as part of the general rationalization of the European plate glass industry which followed an agreement between the European and U. It was soon, however, the major participant in the establishment of a window glass factory built at Llavallol outside Buenos Aires, a joint European venture to safeguard the Europeans' Argentine market.
This factory had hardly come into production when World War II broke out and the Pilkington management there had to struggle hard to maintain and extend it during the war years, when communication between Llavallol and St. Helens was difficult and technical assistance from the parent company was unobtainable.
This growth was due to the outstanding success of the float glass process and also to diversification into what were, for PB, new branches of the glass industry.
In some respects, change was forced on the company rather than welcomed by it. Manufacture of sheet glass in South Africa in , for instance, came about because the South African government, determined to develop a manufacturing industry in that country, proposed to allow a rival to build a sheet glass factory if PB did not do so.
PB's interests would have been best served by exporting as much U. For similar reasons, PB sheet glass manufacture had to be started in Canada in the same year and in India, with local as well as Pilkington capital, in A few years later, PB and AWG took over an aspiring local manufacturer in New Zealand who had attempted to make sheet glass but soon had failed. PB's window glass operations in Argentina, started just before World War II, were developed and led in due course to the acquisition of a sheet glass works in Brazil.
Although PB sacrificed sheet glass exports to these factories, it never lost those of plate glass: maintaining a plate glass factory in these countries would have been far too costly.
Manufacture of higher quality glass overseas had to await the development of the less costly float glass process, which tipped the scales further in the direction of manufacture abroad rather than at home. The float glass process was invented by Alastair Pilkington in At this temperature the ribbon, fire finished, was cool enough to be taken off on rollers without marking the surface.
This revolutionary new method of glassmaking produced polished plate glass much more cheaply by removing the large fixed capital investment in grinding and polishing machinery and by cutting working costs. To obtain perfectly parallel, distortion-free surfaces, the polished plate glass process required 20 percent of the original rough-cast glass to be ground off by many grinding and polishing machines, with vast expenditure of electrical energy.
Having experimented with the new process and developed a full-scale production plant during the s, PB began to sell its own float glass before the decade was out and licensed the process to other glass manufacturers from , with PPG being the first licensee.
Plate glass could no longer compete at the quality end of the market nor, from the early s, when float technology had progressed further, could the cheaper sheet glass. Pilkington built more float lines at St. Helens, and manufacturers elsewhere in the world sought Pilkington licenses and expertise. Its growing industrial muscle and rising license income led to Pilkington building its own float plant in Sweden in the mids.
Others came on stream in overseas markets which it already dominated: Australia in , and a second in ; South Africa in ; and Argentina in Alastair Pilkington, who invented the float glass process, was unrelated to the St. Helens glassmaking family and was a mechanical sciences graduate from Cambridge University.
Although not a member of the Pilkington family, he came to St. Helens as a family trainee in By the time the float process was being developed, he was already on the board pleading its case. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in and was knighted the following year. Between and he was chairman of the company. PB was brought into glass fibers and optical glass as a result of its acquisition of Chance Brothers in the years after The latter had acquired the U. Glass Fibres Ltd. A glass fiber factory was built at St.
Helens after the war, and others followed at home and abroad to make glass silk for weaving and fibers for insulation and reinforcement. In the late s Pilkington Reinforcements Limited stood as the world's leading supplier of special reinforced belting for engines and machinery, that is, for power transmission. Chance Brothers' interest in optical glass went back to the 19th century and its world-renowned lighthouse department. During World War II Chance Brothers and Pilkington operated a shadow plant--a duplicate located away from the original factory as a precaution against bombing--at St.
Helens and continued to undertake defense contracts afterwards. Beginning in , on the initiative of Lawrence Pilkington, optical and ophthalmic glass began production at a specially built works at St. Asaph in north Wales, which soon became the largest producer of unpolished spectacle discs in Europe. Asaph to make optical and electro-optical systems. The joint venture became Pilkington P. This side of the business was strengthened greatly by later acquisitions, notably the purchase of Barr and Stroud, the Scottish optical and precision engineers, in ; Sola Holdings of Australia in ; Syntax Ophthalmic Inc.
At the end of the s, the business was divided into Pilkington Visioncare, its ophthalmic side, which was growing throughout the world, including China and Japan, and Pilkington Optronics, the electro-optical side, which supplied the U. The fourth Pilkington generation oversaw this vast expansion overseas and diversification at home as well as the development of float glass and many other activities.
They were served loyally by senior managers who acted like proconsuls on their behalf abroad and by others at home who accepted greater responsibility as the business grew and its committee system was expanded.
From the mids, when Arthur Pilkington became chairman of the executive committee, much of the company's business devolved to the five divisional boards. One or two outstanding managers had joined the executive committee from the s. Now a few more followed Alastair Pilkington to the top. Harry Pilkington, the company's chairman, was a businessman with a remarkable head for figures, a clear, analytical brain, limitless energy, and a great devotion to work.
In addition to his demanding corporate responsibilities, he managed to fit in the presidency of the Federation of British Industries in London and the chairmanship of a royal commission. The Pilkington family influence persisted for some years after the company went public in Lord Pilkington, created honorary life president when he retired in , used to come into the office regularly until shortly before his death in , and the fourth generation was represented on the board until when the youngest, David Pilkington, retired.
In Pilkington Brothers Ltd. Pilkington became a holding company for a number of major subsidiaries, of which there were 45 in While this changed the atmosphere at St. Helens, it revived the company's fortunes and enabled it to ward off a takeover bid from the London-based conglomerate BTR in As the company entered the s, only one Pilkington remained on the board--the chairman, Sir Antony Pilkington, son of Arthur Pilkington, knighted for his service to U.
On 21 Mar. His most important committees were to consider the bills for the extension of habeas corpus and security against Popery, to inquire into miscarriages in the navy, and to draw up an address for the removal of Lauderdale.
He was also named to the committee for encouraging the export of cloth to Turkey. Despite expectations to the contrary, he was reelected in October, and together with Player promoted a petition from the citizens for the meeting of Parliament.
This, however, was rejected by the common council on 20 Jan. When the second Exclusion Parliament met in October, Pilkington was again very active, with three speeches and 24 committees, including those to bring in the second exclusion bill and to inquire into the conduct of Sir Robert Peyton. I take him to be a common enemy to mankind, and I hope you will use him accordingly. Matters of less overtly political significance with which he was associated included the cleansing and repair of streets in London and Westminster, the regulation of the Post Office, the monopoly of the Royal Africa Company, the general naturalization of foreign Protestants, and the repeal of the Corporations Act.
In the Oxford Parliament he was appointed to the committee of elections and privileges and helped to prepare for a conference on the loss in the previous Parliament of the bill of ease for Protestant dissenters. On 13 May he was appointed to the committee of the common council to draw up the London address for the calling and sitting of another Parliament. Next month, he came at the top of the poll in the election for the London sheriffs, who were responsible for the selection of juries.
The King showed his displeasure at the choice by denying him the customary knighthood. Pilkington was soon to feel the full wrath of the Court. Jeffreys, who acted as counsel for the plaintiff, was believed to have inspired the prosecution.
He and his fellow-sheriff were brought before the Privy Council and sent to the Tower.
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