The Company was founded by W. R. Wood, an American, in 1898 in
London as the
Automatic Furnance Syndicate. It changed its name to the
Underfeed Stoker Company in 1902 and then to
International Combustion Engineering when it moved to
Derby in 1922. By 1959 it had expanded its activities such that it was awarded the contract to provide the
boilers for
Trawsfynydd nuclear power station. It was acquired by
Clarke Chapman in 1974 and then absorbed into
Northern Engineering Industries ('NEI') in 1977; in 1989 NEI was itself acquired by
Rolls-Royce plc and they decided to pass on International Combustion to
ABB Group in 1997. ==References==