Watlow Electric Manufacturing Co. is a family-owned company that designs and manufactures industrial electric heaters, sensors, and controllers. Founded in 1922, it has nine factories and three technology centers in the United States , Mexico , Europe and Asia , and has sales offices in 16 countries. Watlow serves numerous industries, including semiconductor processing, environmental chambers, energy process, diesel emissions , along with medical and foodservice equipment.
30-606: In 1922, Louis Desloge Sr. of the Desloge family founded Watlow in a rented corner space on the second floor of a machine shop in St. Louis , Missouri , and began manufacturing electric heating elements for the shoe industry. The name Watlow refers to the “low-watt” heaters that replaced steam heat . During the 1930s and 1940s, Watlow began selling products outside the United States . Louis' sons Louis Jr. and George Desloge joined
60-550: A charter was requested and granted to the Missouri Lead and Smelting Company on June 5, 1874. The corporate name was later changed to " The Desloge Lead Company " on February 21, 1876. Three shafts were sunk during 1876 and 1877 and a new mill was built. In 1886, a fire destroyed the concentrating mill plant and damaged the rest of surface plant of the Desloge Lead Company. Rather than rebuild, Desloge II sold
90-875: A majority stake of Watlow was acquired by private investment firm Tinicum LP. The Desloge family still has a minority share of the company. In 2022, Watlow acquired Eurotherm from Schneider Electric, expanding the company’s presence in Europe and product offering in sophisticated thermal controls. Desloge family The Desloge family, ( / d ə ˈ l oʊ ʒ / ) centered mostly in Missouri and especially at St. Louis , rose to wealth through international commerce , sugar refining , oil drilling , fur trading , mineral mining , saw milling , manufacturing , railroads , real estate , and riverboats . The family has funded hospitals and donated large tracts of land for public parks and conservation. The family's progenitor
120-538: A public school director there and in St. Francois County. In 1930, a $ 1 million ($ 18,239,044 today ) bequest from Desloge's estate built Firmin Desloge Hospital in St. Louis. (For comparison, John D. Rockefeller Jr . acquired the whole Grand Teton mountain range ( Teton Range ) of 35,000 acres in the 1920s for about $ 1.4 million.) Desloge's wife Lydia gave another $ 100,000 ($ 1,823,904 today ) to build
150-410: A surrey one day trying to decide where to sink a shaft. Desloge spit off one side of the surrey and said there was where they would sink the shaft. Grandfather didn't agree with the location of the spit and split with Desloge to form his own company. Desloge soon sank a shaft and struck the same main vein and deposits as that of those he had worked at Bonne Terre before the fire. Desloge remained on
180-467: Is Desloge. Firmin V. Desloge IV owned and was president of Smokey Oil Company. In 1922, Firmin Desloge II's grandson Louis Desloge (from Jules Desloge) founded Watlow to manufacture electric heating elements for the shoe industry. The name alludes to low- watt electric heaters that replace steam heat . In 2011, Watlow, still a Desloge family business, employed 2,000 employees in 13 factories in
210-672: The Desloge family in America . In 1822, Desloge's father, Firmin René Desloge , came to America from France to work with his uncle Jean Ferdinand Rozier from Ste. Genevieve, Missouri . Born August 30, 1843, in Potosi, Missouri , the young Desloge received his early education in the public schools at Potosi, where the family businesses included fur trading, distilling, and mining. He attended Saint Louis University and later Bryant & Stratton College in St. Louis, Missouri . He
240-660: The Firmin Desloge Hospital , today known as St. Louis University Hospital ; a separate bequest one year later from his wife, Lydia Desloge, built a Desloge Chapel at the hospital. Desloge II willed his original 47 acres of his hand-dug pits of the original lead mining operations and the deeply rutted wagon tracks on a property in Washington County. The family then donated this land for a park, today named Firmin Desloge Park, and dedicated it to
270-693: The Missouri River . The family hosted Russian ballerinas, Shakespearean actors, King Hussein of Jordan, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh . They sheltered the exiled Chancellor of Austria Kurt Schuschnigg , deposed by the Nazis in 1938, freed from encarceration in May 1945. In April 2024, the estate was sold to the Augustine Institute , a private Catholic graduate theology school, which announced plans to move there from Denver . Three members of
300-513: The Claud S. Gordon Company of Richmond, Illinois , the nation’s leading manufacturer of temperature measurement devices. In 1997, Watlow celebrated its 75th anniversary in the thermal products industry. In 2000, Watlow Batavia Inc., then a subsidiary of Watlow, settled a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over the company's English-only policy. The company had fired eight Spanish-speaking workers. The EEOC alleged that
330-875: The Desloge Railway, the Mississippi River and Bonne Terre Railway and then the Valley Railroad. Desloge II was also involved with the development of the Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad (aka the Iron Mountain Railroad ) from St. Louis, Missouri, to Texarkana, Arkansas. The St. Joseph Lead Company built a 13.5-mile narrow gauge railroad from the mines to a junction with the Iron Mountain Railroad at Summit in Washington County. St. Joe paid two-thirds of
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#1732790251128360-593: The Desloge family have been "Queen of Love and Beauty" at the Veiled Prophet Ball , a debutante ball held in December in St. Louis: Anne Kennett Farrar Desloge (daughter of Joseph Desloge Sr.) in 1946, her cousin and goddaughter Diane Waring Desloge (daughter of William L. Desloge) in 1962, and Katherine Falk Desloge (daughter of Stephen F. Desloge) in 2013. Durie Malcolm, wife of Firmin V. Desloge IV,
390-737: The Missouri Lead Mining and Smelting Company in 1874 and the Desloge Lead Company in 1876, inclusively one of the largest and oldest lead mining companies in America. The family moved to St. Louis in 1861, at the outset of the American Civil War, after various attacks at Potosi, Bonne Terre and upon the family lead mining works by both Federal and Confederate armies who sought lead for weapons. Firmin Rene Desloge's son, Firmin V. Desloge II , expanded mining operations and expanded management to Bonne Terre, Missouri ;
420-619: The Missouri River; and sold to St. Louis County the 2,300-acre Pelican Island in the middle of the Missouri River (for just $ 91 an acre ) as a nature preserve. Firmin V. Desloge Firmin Vincent Desloge II (August 30, 1843 – December 18, 1929) was an American industrialist lead mining pioneer in the disseminated lead fields of the Southeast Missouri Lead District and member of
450-717: The St. Joseph Lead Company board of directors until his death in 1929. On October 24, 1877, Firmin Desloge was married at Lexington, Missouri , to Lydia Holden Davis, born June 24, 1855, in Lexington, the daughter of Rebecca (Nave) Davis and Confederate Army Colonel William Joseph Davis, quartermaster to General Sterling Price during the American Civil War. They had four children: Firmin Vincent III, Clara Cynthian, Edwin Owen, and Joseph. From 1870 to 1872, Desloge served as treasurer of Washington County, Missouri . He served as
480-531: The United States, Mexico, Europe, and Asia; had sales offices in 16 countries; and distributed globally. In 2021, the family sold a majority stake in Watlow to Tinicum LP, a private-equity firm. Firmin Desloge II's son, Joseph Desloge, designed an industry-specialty electric fuse that would "kill the arc" and founded Killark Electric in 1913. Joseph Desloge also owned Minerva Oil (a confusing misnomer as it
510-592: The adjacent Desloge Chapel . Firmin V. Desloge died December 18, 1929, in Richmond Heights, Missouri . His estate was settled in 1932, valued at more than $ 52 million ($ 1,161,248,780 today ). He was one of the wealthiest men of that era, alongside W. K. Vanderbilt ($ 52 million) and A. W. Mellon ($ 50 million), but only half as wealthy as the Astors ($ 100 million). A 1909 biography statued, "His life record stands as an exemplification of
540-454: The company sold Watlow Batavia to LV2 Equity Partners of Midland, Michigan . In 2014, the company said it would turn its St. Louis facility into an "advanced technology center" by adding 30,000 square feet of new construction and renovating 56,000 square feet of the existing facility. In 2015, Watlow launched their new F4T with INTUITION, a touch-screen controller that combines the functions of several devices into one process control. In 2021,
570-711: The company. A few years later, George invented the FIREROD cartridge heater. The first swaged cartridge heater, the patented device greatly increased heat transfer efficiency. Together, the Desloges expanded Watlow’s headquarters and St. Louis manufacturing facility to 185,000 square feet. During the mid-1970s, the company introduced the industry's first thermocouple product. Shortly after this time, Watlow grew exponentially both globally and domestically, adding facilities in Kronau , Germany , and Columbia, Missouri ; and acquiring
600-757: The construction costs; the Desloge Company the rest. Around 1916, the Desloge Consolidated Lead Company moved its corporate offices from Desloge, Missouri, to the Rialto Building in downtown St. Louis. While "St. Louis, with its French ancestry, has been noted as a fur capital, more money passed through St. Louis as a result of the lead business in Missouri than did because of the fur business", wrote Doe Run Company CEO Jeffry Zelm. The oldest St. Louis-based lead family
630-671: The corporation known as the Desloge Lead Company . Desloge built a connection with the St. Joseph Lead Company, the first railroad to penetrate the disseminated lead field of St. Francois County. In 1887, the two companies merged to create what was probably the era's greatest lead-mining and smelting company. In 1889, the Bogy Lead Mining Company sold Desloge one of the oldest mining properties in Missouri. He demonstrated that there were valuable deposits of disseminated lead on these lands and folded them into
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#1732790251128660-478: The firings amounted to unlawful discrimination based on national origin, and that Watlow Batavia Inc.'s workplace lacked the safety-related conditions that make an English-only policy permissible. Watlow Batavia Inc. paid $ 192,500, the largest settlement in the four years since the EEOC had started keeping track. Officials denied any company wrongdoing and said they were settling the suit only to avoid litigation. In 2010,
690-518: The firm to the St. Joseph Lead Company. In 1887, the land was cleared and company houses for his staff were constructed at the location which became known as Deslogetown: present-day Desloge, Missouri . Desloge II then founded a new company, the Desloge Consolidated Lead Company . To serve his mines, Desloge II also built the first railroads to penetrate the disseminated lead field of St. Francois County, Missouri :
720-496: The mining families in the area. In 1955, Joseph Desloge donated to the state of Missouri some 2,400 acres of land acquired over 17 years in Reynolds County . The land, which included a shut-in region and more than two miles of river frontage, today composes the bulk of Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park . He continued donating money to improve the park. Desloge also donated land for Sunset Park in north St. Louis County on
750-529: The new Desloge Consolidated Lead Company . The town built to support the mines is now known as Desloge, Missouri . The use of the new diamond drill and the 1893 arrival of a branch from the Mississippi River & Bonne Terre Railroad allowed the already-successful lead mining operations to expand. A grandson of one of Desloge's friends and business colleagues, Harry Cantwell Sr., said: They say that grandfather and Desloge [Firmin Desloge] were riding in
780-453: Was Firmin René Desloge , a descendant of French nobility who emigrated to Missouri in 1823 to join his uncle Jean Ferdinand Rozier who had arrived in Missouri in 1810 with Rozier's business partner John James Audubon . The family's businesses in lead and mercantile in Missouri date from around 1824, when Firmin Rene Desloge built his own smelting furnace as an extension of his Potosi, Missouri , mercantile business. They grew to include
810-466: Was long rumored to have been briefly married to John F. Kennedy in 1947 in Palm Beach, Florida. FBI reports accessed through FOI requests appear to substantiate the rumors. In 1998, Malcolm's sister-in-law, Mrs. William L. Desloge, endorsed the story in a personal interview: "Of course it's true, we were all there at the parties in Palm Beach with them." The 1932 bequest of Desloge II funded
840-503: Was primarily mining zinc and fluorspar ); founded Louisiana Manufacturing Company and Atlas Manufacturing Company; and pursued fluorspar mining in southeastern Illinois. Joseph Desloge's son Joseph Jr. owned uranium mines near Moab, Utah , which he and his partner sold to General Electric; he also made money in natural gas exploration in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania . Firmin Desloge II's new company operated until 1929, when it
870-521: Was sold to the St. Joseph Lead Company for $ 18 million (about $ 319,400,000 today ). The sale lifted the family's wealth past $ 52 million. Desloge II died that same year as one of the wealthiest men in the world, alongside William Vanderbilt ($ 52 million) and Andrew Mellon ($ 50 million), and about half as wealthy as the Astors ($ 100 million). In 1926, the family built a 15,000-square foot French-style mansion on an estate of thousands of acres in present-day Florissant, Missouri , north of St. Louis on
900-498: Was trained to mercantile pursuits, beginning at an early age as a clerk for the firm of John B. Valle & Co. of St. Louis. In 1867, Desloge began mining operations near Potosi, in Washington County . One county to the east was St. Francois County, Missouri , where lead mining was in its infancy. There he prospected lands next to those of the St. Joseph Lead Company , and finally purchased and erected smelting works for
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