Gleason Corporation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gleason Corporation (formerly Gleason Works) is a prominent machine tool company based in Rochester, New York, USA. It has manufacturing plants in the USA, Britain, India, and Germany, and sales offices in those and additional countries.

Gleason's importance lies in gear manufacturing—specifically, in building the machine tools that themselves make gears. These gears and these machines are sold to industrial customers in a wide variety of fields, including prominent companies in the automotive and aerospace industries. Today's cars and airplanes couldn't exist without the advances in gear-cutting technology pioneered by Gleason.

[edit] History

Gleason Works, the machine shop that eventually evolved into the Gleason Corporation, was founded by Irish immigrant William Gleason in 1865 after his previous experience in other machine shops.

An important product came in 1874 with William's invention of the first bevel gear planer.

Willam's daughter Kate was integral to the company's early operations, along with brothers James E. and Andrew C.

In the early 20th century, Gleason Works was the first machine tool builder to create machine tools to cut hypoid gears.

[edit] References

• personal interviews/tours at Gleason Corporation facilities
• [1], official company website