American Machine and Foundry or AMF was founded in 1900 and was once one of the largest recreational equipment companies in the United States.
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The company was founded by Rufus L. Patterson, inventor of the first automated cigarette manufacturing machine. Originally incorporated in New Jersey but operating in Brooklyn, the company began by manufacturing cigarette, baking, and stitching machines.[1] In 1943, Patterson's son, Morehead Patterson, took over AMF. After World War II ended, Patterson determined that the company had to 'grow or die'.[1] Searching for new products, he came across a crude prototype of an automatic bowling-pin setter. To get the necessary cash to develop the invention, Patterson swapped off AMF stock to acquire eight small companies with fast-selling products. After incorporating key features developed by Leslie L. LeVeque, the AMF Pinspotter, perfected and put on the market in 1951, helped to turn bowling into the most popular U.S. participative, competitive sport.[1] [2]
In 1950, after purchasing the Roadmaster line of children's and youth bicycles from the Cleveland Welding Company, AMF entered the bicycle manufacturing business with its newly-formed AMF Wheel Goods Division. In 1953, after a prolonged labor strike, AMF moved bicycle manufacturing from a UAW-organized plant in Cleveland, Ohio to a new facility in Little Rock, Arkansas.[3] The new plant was heavily automated and featured more than a mile of part conveyor belts in six separate systems, including an electrostatic induction painting operation.[4]
Taking advantage of the increase in its target markets in the aftermath of the baby boom, AMF was able to diversify its product line, adding exercise equipment under the brand name Vitamaster in 1950. As demand for bicycles continued to expand, the company found the need for a new manufacturing facility to keep up with demand. In 1962, the company moved its operations to Olney, Illinois, where it built a new factory on a 122-acre (0.49 km2) site that would remain the company's principal bicycle manufacturing location into the 1990s.
After two decades of consistent growth, the AMF Wheel Goods Division stalled under the long-distance management of a parent company bogged down in layers of corporate management and marginally profitable product lines. Manufacturing quality as well as the technical standard of the Roadmaster bicycle line - once the pride of the company - had fallen to an all-time low. Bicycles made at the Olney plant were manufactured so poorly that some Midwestern bike shops refused to repair them, claiming that the bikes would not stay fixed no matter how much labor and effort was put into them.[5] The division's problems with quality and outside competition were neatly summed up in a 1979 American film, Breaking Away, in which identical secondhand AMF Roadmaster track bicycles were used by competitors in the Little 500 bicycle race. Despite this product placement, the film's protagonist expressed a decided preference for his lightweight Italian Masi road racing bike, deriding the elderly Roadmaster as a 'piece of junk'.[6]
In 1997, the Roadmaster bicycle division was sold to the Brunswick Corporation. However, it had already become evident that production of low-cost, mass-market bicycles in the United States was no longer viable in the face of intense foreign competition,[7] and in 1999, all U.S. production of Roadmaster bicycles ceased. Brunswick sold its bicycle division and the Roadmaster brand to Pacific Cycle, which began distributing a new Roadmaster line of bicycles imported from Taiwan and the People's Republic of China. Pacific Cycle still uses the Olney facility for corporate offices and as a product inventory and distribution center.
To expand its line of recreational equipment, AMF bought W. J. Voit Rubber Corp. (tread rubber, scuba gear), Ben Hogan Co. (golfing equipment), and Wen-Mac Corp. (engine-powered toy airplanes).[1]
By 1961, AMF controlled and operated 42 plants and 19 research facilities scattered across 17 countries, producing everything from remote-controlled toy airplanes to ICBM launching systems. AMF was the builder of the launching silos for the Titan and Atlas ICBMs, and also developed the rail-car launching system for the solid-fueled Minuteman ICBM.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s the company ran neck-and-neck with General Dynamics in the construction of nuclear power reactors. AMF sold the nations of Pakistan and Iran their first nuclear reactors.[1] Peter Karter was among the young engineers working on the reactors AMF built in Pakistan and Iran under the Atoms for Peace program.[8][9][10]
In 1960 the company moved its headquarters from 249 Madison Avenue, Manhattan, to suburban Westbury, New York.
In the early 1960s, American Machine and Foundry partnered with the French company SAFEGE to design, construct, and market a monorail for American cities. The AMF Monorail was exhibited at the 1964 New York World's Fair where it traversed a continuous elevated loop above and around the Amusement section of the World's Fair. It was displayed as a practical form of transportation for the future.
In 1971, American Machine and Foundry was renamed AMF. For many years, the company continued to produce a wide variety of sport and leisure equipment, including Roadmaster bicycles, Harley-Davidson motorcycles (1969-81), Head snow skis and tennis racquets (1969-85), snowmobiles, lawn and garden equipment, Ben Hogan golf clubs (1960-85), Voit inflatable balls, exercise equipment (including exercycles), motorized bicycles, mopeds, SlickCraft powerboats (1969-80), Alcort sailboats (including the Sunfish and the Hilu), Hatteras Yachts, and SCUBA gear.
In the late 1970s, in a reference to its numerous leisure product lines, the company began a TV advertising campaign centered on the slogan "AMF, we make weekends". For a short time, the company owned Dewalt Tools (1949-60), and manufactured gymnastics equipment under the AMF brand. The gymnastics division was later spun off to form American Athletic (AAI) which used the same logo as AMF but with different text. New and improved exercycles, such as the Computrim line, the first to incorporate an electronic heart monitor, were introduced. AMF also acquired a recreational motor home division in the form of Atlas Recreational Vehicles of Mason City, Iowa, which was disbanded after heavy losses following the fuel crisis of the early 1970s.
By the late 1970s, the company had fallen on hard times. The absence of stable management (the company had seven presidents between 1972 and 1982), aging production facilities, rising labor costs, and the inability of AMF to efficiently operate and control its numerous corporate product divisions from its headquarters in White Plains, New York, contributed to a steady decline in sales and profits. Unlike large Japanese corporations such as Matsushita Electric Industrial, which had a standing corporate policy of discontinuing any product line or division in which they were not able to stay in first or second place in total market sales, AMF had continued a practice of purchasing new companies in unfamiliar markets, while simultaneously failing to reorganize and modernize its core operations.[11] As a result, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the company lost an average of 8 million U.S. dollars per year. Some subsidiaries were sold, including Harley-Davidson in 1981.
For a time, the Italian scuba-diving equipment manufacturer Mares was part of AMF, and was able to secure the rights to the MR-12 regulator, previously made by Voit, and continue to manufacture After AMF was sold, Mares would revert to an independent manufacturer; eventually becoming part of a worldwide consortium of sports equipment companies, ironically including another former AMF division Head, manufacturer of skiing equipment, and later, tennis racquets. [12]
In 1985, AMF was acquired through hostile takeover by Minstar Inc., a Minneapolis-based holding company controlled by investor Irwin L. Jacobs.[13] The company continued supplying equipment to the bowling industry as AMF.
In 2005, the company became known as QubicaAMF Worldwide when it partnered with Italy-based Qubica Worldwide. The partnership takes advantage of Qubica's expertise in automatic scoring technology and AMF's technology in lane equipment and pinsetters.
AMF's sole remaining asset is the AMF Bowling Corporation, founded in 1936, and headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. The company employs 16,000 people worldwide as AMF Bowling Inc.
In 2007, a new company, 900 Global, purchased the rights to sell bowling balls with the AMF logo.[14]
AMF Bowling of the United Kingdom currently has 33 bowling centers.[15] Once a foreign subsidiary of the parent U.S. company, it is now a separately-owned entity. AMF Worldwide sold the UK division in 2004 to certain shareholders of the British leisure conglomerate, Bourne Leisure.[16] While not owned by Bourne, there are strong ties between the two entities.
Most of the AMF Bowling/UK centers have been renovated, with only a handful awaiting refurbishment or relocation. The roll out began after the shareholder acquisition.
Due to the growing popularity of ten-pin bowling in Australia, AMF began a joint venture to manufacture pinspotters there in 1959. By 1964 1,600 lanes existed in Australia, but the popularity of the sport had begun to decline. AMF bought two major Australian bowling chains which revived interest in bowling. AMF expanded from 16 centres to 30 by 1987, and to over 40 by 2004.
Code Hennessy (which purchased AMF Worldwide in 2004) sold the Australian division of AMF Worldwide to Macquarie Leisure Trust in February 2005.