Parker Hannifin

1917–1950 Parker-Hannifin was founded by Arthur L. Parker in 1917 or 1918 as the "Parker Appliance Company". In its early years, it built pneumatic brake systems for buses, trucks, and trains. In 1919, Parker's truck slid over a cliff, causing the company to lose its entire inventory and forcing Arthur Parker to return to his previous job for five years. relocated his headquarters into an expanded Euclid Ave location on the east side of Cleveland. Arthur Parker re-founded the company in 1924. By 1927, the firm had expanded into airplanes. For his flight across the Atlantic Ocean, Charles Lindbergh requested Parker parts be used in the construction of his aircraft Spirit of St. Louis. During World War II, Parker experienced a boom in business when it became the primary supplier of valves and fluid connectors to the U.S. Army Air Forces, the forerunner of the U.S. Air Force. and the end of the war, the company neared bankruptcy due to the sudden drop in demand. Arthur Parker's wife, Helen Parker, assumed control of the company and prevented its liquidation. She hired new management staff and directed the company's focus back to civilian manufacturing. He rose to become its president in 1968, and served as CEO from 1971 to 1983 and as chairman from 1977 to 1999. During and after his tenure, the firm grew dramatically, with revenues rising from $197 million in 1968 to over $7 billion in 2005. The company debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in 1964, under the ticker symbol PH. In 1966, the company joined the Fortune 500. Parker Hannifin systems helped control the massive replica of the Titanic in the 1997 film of the same name. In 1999, the company's sales reached approximately $5 billion. 2000s–present Parker Hannifin acquired Commercial Intertech Corporation, a maker of hydraulic systems, in 2000.Commercial Intertech had previously acquired Oildyne Inc., a well known hydraulic manufacturer. Parker has an Oildyne division today. With a cost of $366 million, this was at the time Parker Hannifin's biggest acquisition. In 2002 the company appointed Craig Maxwell as head of engineering; Maxwell brought a focus on innovation as well as rigor; he argued for and was given a $20M annual budget to fund blue sky inventions made by engineers and has given engineers time to pursue them; at the same time his team developed software that allows tracking each of the company's 1700 ongoing R&D projects graded by risk and potential reward, and closely managing their progress. In 2011 he hired Ryan Farris out of Vanderbilt University and licensed patents covering a powered exoskeleton that Farris had worked on at Vanderbilt. In 2015 the company opened an internal business incubator that Maxwell had proposed when he was first hired. Two years later, its products were used in repairing the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. In 2016, the company completed its largest acquisition to date, buying Clarcor, a filtration systems manufacturer, for $4.3 billion. In 2019, Parker bought Lord Corporation for $3.7 billion and Kent, WA based Exotic Metals Forming Company for $1.7 billion. In August 2021, the company agreed to buy British aerospace and defense company Meggitt for £6.3 billion. In July 2022, after making commitments to the UK government including increasing research and development spending in Britain, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy approved the takeover without being referred for a full Competition and Markets Authority investigation. The acquisition completed in September 2022. In May 2022, it was announced Parker Hannifin has sold its aircraft wheel and brake division to the Bloomfield-headquartered aerospace company, Kaman Corporation for US$440 million. In November 2025, Parker Hannifin announced a deal to buy Filtration Group—a privately held filtration-technologies manufacturer—for $9.25 billion. The deal is expected to create one of the largest industrial filtration businesses in the world. ==Aerospace==

Parker Hannifin's aerospace group designs and manufactures aerospace hydraulic equipment, flight controls, fuel system components, high-temperature bleed air valves, and other components. Headquartered in Irvine, California, Parker Aerospace operates facilities around the world. The company has had contracts to contribute parts and maintenance for machinery produced by Airbus, Rolls-Royce, Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China as well as other manufacturers. In 1993, the Federal Aviation Administration contracted Parker Aerospace to develop a new monitoring device, the Multi-Sensor Enroute Flight Inspection System, for flight inspection aircraft. Notable acquisitions by the division include the Kalamazoo, Michigan-based Abex/NWL division of Pneumo Abex in 1996, and Naples, Florida-based Shaw Aero Devices, in 2007. Boeing 737 accidents and incidents In 1995, it was discovered that failures in a servo unit supplied by Parker Hannifin to Boeing for use in its 737 aircraft may have contributed to several accidents and incidents, including the crashes of United Airlines Flight 585 and USAir Flight 427. In 2004, a Los Angeles jury ordered Parker Hannifin to pay US$43 million to the plaintiff families of the 1997 SilkAir Flight 185 crash in Indonesia. Parker Hannifin subsequently appealed the verdict, which resulted in an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed amount. The Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) could not determine the cause of the crash due to the near total lack of physical evidence because of the complete destruction; The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), however disagreed, and concluded that the crash was caused, possibly intentionally, by the pilot. The FAA ordered an upgrade of all Boeing 737 rudder control systems by November 12, 2002. The firm argued that the components it supplied were not at fault, citing that the product has one of the safest records in its class, but the FAA directive went through regardless. In 2016, former NTSB investigator John Cox stated that time has proven the NTSB correct in its findings that the valve was faulty, because no additional rudder-reversal incidents have occurred since Boeing's redesign. F-35 fueldraulic line failure On January 18, 2013, the F-35B variant of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II was grounded after the failure of a fueldraulic line in the aircraft's propulsion system that controls the exhaust vectoring system. This followed an incident two days earlier on January 16, in which the propulsion system experienced a fueldraulic failure prior to a conventional takeoff. The failure was found to be a manufacturing defect by Parker Hannifin's Stratoflex division. ==References==