History of Foxboro: It’s All About the Process
Many success stories begin with only a dream and a shoestring budget. This story, however, started with a dream and better financing. Heirs to a company run by their father, Edgar Heil Bristol and Bennet Beri Bristol decided not to be a part of that family business. Also different about this story is that most companies start, grow, and acquire later. The Bristol brothers, however, began with acquisitions in their inaugural year of 1908. First on the list were Standard Electric Gauge Manufacturing Co. and Standard Electric Time Co. Next came Shepherd Plating and Finishing Co. The brothers then formed Industrial Instrument in Foxborough, Massachusetts (“Foxboro” is an alternative spelling.) and, by the end of the year had 53 employees earning about 13 cents per hour producing gauges for use in steam boilers, refrigeration units, and automobiles.
(Keep in mind that Invensys, the company that today encompasses Foxboro, has roots going all the way back to 19th century England when inventor Augustus Siebe formed an engineering firm that developed, grew and strengthened through the following century.)
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In the following year, Industrial Instrument bought a subdivision of Western Electric, called American Instrument Co.—and with it, their lathes, presses, and automatic screw machines. Production expanded through 1911 to include a broader gauge line as well as temperature monitors, its first multi-pen recorder and a long-distance, recording psychrometer. Later, the company marketed differential pressure devices to gas companies, utilities, and the process industries. As the aircraft industry began to take off, the company launched its airspeed indicators. As more cars rolled off assembly lines, Industrial Instrument temperature gauges, originally developed for aircraft, were adapted for use in automobiles. In 1912, the company adopted the Foxboro trademark and, two years later, changed its name to The Foxboro Company. In 1915, Foxboro stunned attendees of the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition (left) with an impressive array of instrumentation.
On the heels of early financial struggles, Foxboro won a large, temperature gauge contract from the British military during World War I, substantially strengthening its business position. During this time period, the company also expanded its operations to include branch office in New York, Chicago, and Cleveland.
The quest for quality isn’t something just invented in the 1980s. As far back as the 1920s, Foxboro made substantial changes in its machine shops and on its assembly lines to improve manufacturing quality and consistency. Innovations continued with, for example, the introduction of the Stabilog 10 controller in 1923. This device introduced Reset (Integral) functionality to process control, setting the standard for a generation of devices to come.
The Stabilog (above left) eliminated the offset between setpoint and measurement, dramatically increasing measurement accuracy. By 1926, the company’s Direct Set pneumatic controller (above right) replaced vacuum with positive air signals.
Innovations continued post-WWI, with pneumatic controls, flowmeters, motor-driven chart drives, helping the company weather the early 1930s. Sales branched out to the rapidly growing oil and automotive industries during this decade and, in 1933, the year of IEN’s birth, the company expanded its operations into Canada—and in 1934, to England.
With defense experience to build upon, Foxboro entered WWII manufacturing torpedo mechanisms for England in June of 1941—even before the U.S. entered the conflict.
Later U.S. DoD contracts included innovations to help chart the course of U.S. torpedoes. WWII brought a doubling of the company’s payroll as well as the hiring of a large number of women for the first time (below).
Sons Benjamin and Rexford became president and treasurer, respectively, following the deaths of the company’s founders in the early 1940s.
Employing more than 1,500 people by 1950, more business also meant a new warehouse, assembly building, and “House in the Pines” for use as a training facility. Construction continued through this decade, along with product innovations in pneumatic and electric measurement instruments.
The Consotrol line, represented here, included the lower-cost M/52 recorder/controller combination (upper left, above), the M/58 pneumatic (lower left, above), and the M/62 (above right), the first all solid-state electronic controller.
In 1952, this company also expanded into Mexico and started other operations around the world, paired with Yokogawa to distribute Foxboro instruments in the Far East, and also bolstered its U.S. operations with new branches in Illinois, Texas, and Georgia. Nearing the end of the ‘50’s, Foxboro’s employee roll grew to more than 2,000, and the company’s physical plant expanded to more than 490,000 sq. ft. For the first time in its history, the company also went public and sold shares on the stock exchange. The Bristol family teamed with a third investor, and retained control of one-third of the company’s stock.
In the 1960’s, social issues became big and computers, even bigger. Foxboro’s M9700 process computer debuted in 1961, and the company released a breakthrough in direct digital control: the DEC-based PCP88.
The Consotrol line expanded with both the 100 Series featuring pneumatic printed circuits, pneumatic logic switches, and a removable manual control. The Electronic Consotrol H-Line boasted bumpless/balanceless transfer between manual and automatic modes. The 1960’s wrapped up with a roll-out of its first computerized batch process.
The company grew at a steady 15% rate through the 1970s. It’s most notable product innovation was the SPEC 200 (left), the company’s first distributed control system which also included a serial digital data highway. Now competing with Honeywell for the #1 spot in process controls, the company led in the chemical, petrochemical, and oil markets. The company’s Spectrum process control system, announced in 1979, combined the earlier SPEC 200 system and VIDEOSPEC with anew, microprocessor-based controller and additional I/O capability—joining both standard analog measurement and newer digital counting devices. The company’s award winning motor (lower left)—using Nitinol wire, which changed length with temperature combined with SPEC 200 enabled, for the first time, a 100% view of the process.
Pushed by the force of the Spectrum system, Foxboro’s orders surged 20% in 1980, helping the 
company reach sales of $484 million that year. A couple of years later, the company formed a joint venture called Shanghai-Foxboro and also bought a significant portion of a small-computer manufacturer. Economic recession and miscalculations hit the company hard; earnings dropped substantially. By the mid-1980s, the company at various times froze salaries, shut down operations, and implemented layoffs and early retirements. Troubles continued through the 1980s. Innovations continued even in the midst of financial troubles, however.
Early in the decade, the company’s EXACT controller (right) was the first of its kind in the process control industry to use artificial intelligence, which enabled EXACT to self-tune difficult control loops. Also, the company announced the Intelligent Automation (I/A) Series (below) of process control systems, said to be the world’s first open industrial system. While advanced, the I/A Series was plagued early on with software issues.
Dissatisfied stockholders who, at this time consisted of members of the Bristol family and investor George Soros, drove the company to seek an outside buyer. By June of 1990, the company became “the crown jewel” of Siebe PLC, who purchased Foxboro for $656 million and openly announced its intent to “bury” Foxboro’s closest competitor.
Patents continued strongly through the 1990s. Product innovations increased through this decade and include such milestones as embedding real-time, sensor-based measures in embedded control systems; the first certified interface to ERP systems, working with SAP; expansion into Ethernet fieldbuses; and the first process and analytical control solution based on MRA (magnetic resonance analysis). Also significant was the 1998 announcement of Connoisseur MPC (model predictive control) control software which, using complex mathematical algorithms to take process control capabilities and precision far beyond that of traditional and relatively simple PID (proportional-integral-derivative) technology. Such advancements combined with both new Siebe management and a retooled I/A system helped Foxboro regain its competitive position.
Also significant was the 1998 introduction of Connoisseur model predictive control software, which used complex mathematical algorithms to take process control capabilities and precision far beyond that of traditional and relatively simple proportional-integral-derivative technology.
In 1999 Siebe, which spent the decade acquiring companies including Eberle, Triconex, Eurotherm, Wonderware, SimSci-Esscor, merged with British Tire & Rubber, another British engineering firm, to form Invensys plc and forming Invensys Process Systems (IPS). The unit provides technology to the process control sector to measure, analyze, and implement performance improvements by integrating enterprise asset management, industrial automation, simulations, optimization, and safety systems.
Today, Foxboro—an integral component of Invensys and the IPS unit—stands tall and poised to continue developing new innovations for process automation well into the future.
