Plessey
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The Plessey Company plc was a British-based international electronics, defence and telecommunications company.
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[edit] History
Founded in 1917 in Marylebone, central London but moving to Cottenham Road in Ilford early in 1919 (and then to Vicarage Lane where it remained) The Plessey Company became one of the largest manufacturers in this field as the radio and television industries grew.
Plessey were partners in the development of the Atlas Computer in 1962 and in the development of Digital telephone systems - System X - during the late 1970s. During the 1970s and early 1980s, Plessey manufactured a series of computer systems and peripherals compatible with Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-11.
[edit] GEC takeover bid
In December 1985 GEC launched a takeover bid for the Plessey Company, valuing the group at £1.2 billion. Both Plessey and the Ministry of Defence were against the merger, GEC and Plessey were the two largest suppliers to the MoD and in many tenders the only competitors. In January 1986 the bid was referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC), whose report published in August advised against the merger. The government concurred and blocked GEC's bid.
In 1988 Plessey and The General Electric Company (GEC) merged their telecom units to form GEC-Plessey Telecommunications (GPT), the UK's leading telecommunications manufacturer.
[edit] GEC Siemens takeover
In 1988 GEC and Siemens AG set up a jointly held company, GEC Siemens plc, to launch a hostile takeover of Plessey. GEC Siemens' initial offer was made on 23 December 1988 valuing Plessey at £1.7 billion. Again Plessey rejected the offer and again it was referred to the MMC. The original proposal envisaged joint ownership of all of Plessey's defence businesses, with GPT and Plessey's North American businesses split in the ratios 60:40 and 51:49 respectively. The level of GEC's involvement in the Plessey defence businesses was not likely to meet with regulatory approval and in February GEC Siemens announced a new organisation. The takeover was completed in September 1989. In April 1990 GEC and Siemens agreed a new structure of ownership of the Plessey businesses:[1]
[edit] GEC acquisitions
- UK
- Plessey Aerospace
- Plessey Avionics
- Plessey Crypto
- Plessey Materials
- Plessey Naval Systems
- Plessey Semiconductors
- Plessey Research Caswell
- North America
- Plessey Aero Precision Corp
- Plessey Dynamics Corp
- Plessey Electronic Systems Corp (including ES Marine Systems)
- Sippican Inc
- Plessey Materials Inc
- Leigh Instruments
[edit] Siemens acquisitions
- Siemens Plessey Radar
- Siemens Plessey Defence Systems
- Siemens Plessey Controls
- Siemens Plessey Australia
- Roke Manor Research Limited
[edit] Jointly owned
- GEC-Plessey Telecommunications (GPT): 60% GEC and 40% Siemens
[edit] Disposals
- Birkby Plastics
- Hoskyns Group
- Plessey Spa (Italy)
- 51% share in Plessey Telenet acquired by minority partner in 1992.
[edit] Subsequent history
In 1997 British Aerospace and Daimler-Benz Aerospace acquired the UK operations and German part of Siemens Plessey Systems, respectively. In 1999 Siemens acquired GEC's interests in Siemens Plessey. GEC acquired Siemens' 40% interest in GPT the same year, renaming it Marconi Communications.
GEC Plessey Semiconductors (GPS) was purchased by Mitel Semiconductors of Canada in 1998. After a number of downsizes the company renamed itself Zarlink Semiconductor in 2001. The GPS fab in Plymouth was acquired by Xfab and still houses a small Zarlink test facility.
In August 1998 Plessey was bought by Dimension Data and World-wide African Investment Holdings for R1.6Billion, they retained BSW Data, Plessey Solutions and Communications Systems. The remaining divisions were bought back by a combined management buyout supported by Rand Merchant Bank. The corporate name was changed to Tellumat Pty Ltd. Tellumat continues to manufacture Plessey products as before. Dimension Data markets the telecommunications-only products in Africa, and Tellumat market all Plessey products world-wide, excluding African telecommunications products.
[edit] Plessey barcodes
The name is also used to refer to a barcode symbology developed by Plessey, which is still used in some libraries and for shelf tags in retail stores, in part as a solution to their internal requirement for stock control. Its chief advantages are the relative ease of printing using the dot-matrix printers popular at the time of the code's introduction, and its somewhat higher density than the more common 2 of 5 and 3 of 9 codes.
Plessey barcodes use two bar widths. Whitespace between bars is not significant. The start element is a wide bar, and the stop element is two narrow bars. In between, the bars are in groups of four. High order bars appear leftmost. Narrow bars are zero and wide bars are 1.
This symbology is not self checking, though a modulo 10 or modulo 11 checksum (depending on application) is usually appended.
[edit] References
- ^ "The Plessey Carve-up", Financial Times, The Financial Times Limited, 1990-04-04, p. 26. Retrieved on November 29, 2006.
