In 1867,
Stephen Wilcox, Jr. and his partner
George Herman Babcock, of Providence, Rhode Island, patented their so-called safety boiler (“Improvements in Steam Generators,” U.S. Patent No. 65,042). Its water was dispersed in many small tubes that resisted exploding when heated, a significant advance over conventional shell boilers, whose water was concentrated in a single container. When overheated, seams of the shell could burst, causing an explosion, often with fatal consequences. The water tube boiler had the added advantages that it could generate steam under higher pressure and more efficiently than existing designs. In 1878,
Thomas Edison purchased B&W boiler No. 92 for his
Menlo Park laboratory. In 1895, B&W supplied of steam furnaces of Kahrizak sugar factory, Tehran, Iran. In 1898, Robert Jurenka and Alois Seidl signed an agreement with the British division,
Babcock & Wilcox Ltd, to make the
Berlin, Germany Babcock sales office into a
subsidiary of the British company; a factory in
Oberhausen in the
Ruhr district made the boiler designed by the American engineers. In 1902, New York City's first subway line was powered by B&W boilers. During 1907 and 1909,
Theodore Roosevelt's
Great White Fleet were powered by B&W Boilers., In 1915, The Babcock & Wilcox Company acquired the Dumbarton Weldless Tube Company Ltd., originally
Kosmoid Tubes Ltd., with works in
Dumbarton,
Scotland (operational until 1997). In 1923, both Babcock & Wilcox Ltd and The Babcock & Wilcox Company bought into
The Goldie & McCulloch Company Ltd of
Cambridge,
Ontario, to form Babcock-Wilcox & Goldie-McCulloch Ltd in
Canada. In 1929, B&W installed the world's first commercial size
recovery boiler using the
magnesium bisulfite process in
Quebec, Canada. Between 1941 and 1945, B&W designed and delivered 4,100 marine boilers for combat and merchant ships, including 95 percent of the US fleet in
Tokyo Bay at
Japanese surrender. In 1942, the company developed the
cyclone furnace. Between 1943 and 1945, B&W provided components, materials and process development for
Manhattan Project. Between 1949 and 1952, B&W provided the 8 boilers for the , the fastest ocean liner ever constructed. Between 1953 and 1955, B&W designed and fabricated components for , world's first nuclear-powered submarine. In 1961, B&W designed and supplied reactors for world's first commercial nuclear ship . In 1962, B&W designed and furnished reactor systems for B&W's first commercial reactor,
Indian Point, NY, using HEU 233. In 1967, the name of Babcock-Wilcox & Goldie-McCulloch Ltd is changed to Babcock & Wilcox Canada Ltd. In 1999, B&W was awarded the contract to develop
fuel cells and
steam reforming for
US Navy. On February 22, 2000, B&W filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in part as a result of thousands of claims for personal injury due to prolonged exposure to
asbestos and
asbestos fibers. Claims included
asbestosis,
lung cancer,
pleural and
peritoneal mesothelioma. As a condition of emerging from
bankruptcy, B&W created a trust fund to compensate victims for amounts far less than settlements paid in individual personal injury lawsuits. After B&W emerged from bankruptcy in 2006, B&W and
BWX Technologies, both subsidiaries of the McDermott International, Inc., merged on 26 November 2007 to form The Babcock & Wilcox Companies, headed by President John Fees. The old company logo was changed. On June 10, 2009, B&W unveiled B&W Modular Nuclear Energy, LLC (B&W MNE). On the same day, B&W MNE announced its plans to design and develop the
B&W mPower reactor, a modular, scalable nuclear reactor. The B&W mPower reactor design is a 125 megawatt, passively safe Advanced Light Water Reactor (ALWR) (a
Generation III reactor) with a below-ground containment structure. The reactor is set to be manufactured in a factory, shipped by rail, then buried underground. On May 12, 2010, B&W announced that it and its subsidiaries would be spun off from its parent company, McDermott International, Inc. The headquarters moved from
Lynchburg, Virginia to Charlotte. and the company became The Babcock & Wilcox Company. On August 2, 2010, B&W began trading on the
New York Stock Exchange as BWC. On June 30, 2015, Babcock & Wilcox completed a
spinoff from
BWX Technologies, its former parent company. The two companies began trading separately on July 1 when Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises, Inc. was listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol: BW. In 2016, in the UK, the company was ordered to change its name following a petition filed by Babcock International. On September 24, 2018, Babcock & Wilcox announced that it would move its corporate headquarters from Charlotte to
Akron, Ohio, into space formerly occupied by the
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company prior to its move to a new building nearby. On December 30, 2019, Babcock & Wilcox relocated its corporate headquarters from
Barberton, Ohio, to Akron, Ohio. ==See also==