Pittway
American corporation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pittway Corporation was a diversified holding company best known as a manufacturer and distributor of professional and consumer[5] fire and burglar alarms.
In 1962, Neison Harris became president, after having worked as an executive at Gillette, at a time when the company was transitioning from a trolley operating company to a diversified concern running multiple businesses.[1] Pittway completed its divestment out transportation in 1964 through sale of Pittsburgh Railways to the Port Authority of Allegheny County, receiving more than US$16 million for the operations.[2][nt 1] The demise of the trolley operations could likely be attributed to the rise in personal car purchases.[2]
Neison Harris' brother, Irving B. Harris, also played a significant part in the company.[2] Leo Guthart was previously the company's vice-chairman.[6]
Among the company's acquisitions in the 1960s were Barr-Stalfort Co., an aerosol cans filler company, Alarm Device Manufacturing Co., and Industrial Publishing Co.[2]
It relocated its headquarters to Chicago in 1967.[7][when?] In 1967, the company was renamed to Pittway Corporation.[8][9] Later, Pittway became best known as a manufacturer and distributor of the First Alert brand of home smoke alarms, professional fire and burglar alarms, and other security systems, and as a real estate firm.[8] It also owned the fire alarm companies Fire-Lite and Notifier.
By 1968[update], the company's vice-chairman was C. D. Palmer, who was also the senior executive based in the company's former home town of Pittsburgh.[2]
In 1976, Pittway acquired Penton and merged Industrial Publishing into Penton.[10] In the 1970s, specifically in 1977[update], Pittway and General Electric were the dominant consumer smoke alarm manufacturers.[4] At that time, Pittway units were distributed by Sears.[4] In 1978, the Consumer Product Safety Commission assessed a US$100,000 fine against Pittway for selling smoke detectors which were themselves fire hazards.[11]
In 1998, Pittway spun off Penton as an independent company. Proposed in December 1999 and completed in February 2000, Honeywell acquired Pittway for US$2.2 billion as a play to expand the breadth of their business in its home and building control unit.[1][3][12]