| Type | LLC |
|---|---|
| Industry | Manufacturer of Electrical Connectors and Installation tooling |
| Founded | 1924 |
| Products | Tools, fittings and connectors |
| Employees | Approximately 1200 |
| Website | www.burndy.com |
Burndy LLC is a manufacturer of connectors, fittings and tools for electrical utilities, commercial, industrial, and maintenance companies. The company, headquartered in Manchester, New Hampshire, has approximately 1,200 employees and operates three manufacturing facilities in the Northeastern United States, one in Brazil and one in Mexico.
Burndy manufactures connectors for splicing, tapping, terminating, conducting or grounding, and provides certification and testing of tool and connector products to the following standards: ANCE, ANSI, SATM, CSA, IEC, IEEE, MILITARY, NEMA, NUPIC, SLMA, SAE, UL.
Contents |
The company was founded in 1924 as Burndy Engineering Company by noted science historian and civic leader Bern Dibner.The corporate name, Burndy, was derived from a contraction of Dr. Dibner’s first name and last initial. While employed as an engineer unifying the electrical system in Cuba, Dr. Dibner identified the urgent need for improved methods for connecting electrical conductors and joining power system substations. He proceeded to design a universal connector, requiring neither soldering nor welding - which enabled a unified grid. He patented and fabricated his design, then formed his company with an investment of just $5000.[1] Building on a technical foundation of 24 patents granted to him for connector design, he guided the growth of Burndy until his retirement as chairman in 1972.
In 1956, the Burndy Corporation went public, and was bought by the French corporation Framatome Connectors International (FCI) in 1988[2]. In 2009, Burndy was acquired and became a subsidiary of Hubbell Incorporated(NYSE: HUBA, HUBB)[3].
Burndy today is a global organization that has pioneered in the manufacture of electrical connectors for the Commercial/Industrial, Utility, Renewable Energies, Telecommunications and OEM markets.
In addition to his association with the company he founded, Bern Dibner is frequently identified with one of the world’s leading collections of source material in the history of science, now located at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA. The Burndy Library, a 67,000-volume collection of rare books and original manuscripts was housed in Norwalk, Connecticut from 1964 until after Bern Dibner's death in 1988, when the contents were moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2006, the collection was donated to the Huntington Library and combined with The Huntington’s History of Science materials. In November 2008, the Dibner Hall of Science opened as a permanent exhibition of the Huntington Library.[4]
One quarter of Dibner's collection was donated to the Smithsonian Institution in 1974, forming the nucleus of what is now the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, part of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries located at the National Museum of American History, Behring Center.
Dr. Dibner’s son, David Dibner, had a more than 30-year career at the Burndy Corporation, and served as chairman prior to his death in 2005.
Burndy received the "TED Best of the Best" 2009 Events award for hosting the Dibner Hall reception along with the associated reprint of the 1929 BURNDY® Bus catalog. The award recognized the best electrical marketing cam¬paigns fielded in 2008. More than 300 entries were submitted. The Dibner Hall, located at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, is called “Beautiful Science: Ideas that Changed the World.” The exhibition highlighted four areas of exploration: astronomy, natural history, medicine, and light.[5]
In 2008, BURNDY® won awards as supplier of the year from WESCO International, Inc. and Border States Industries, Inc. and received Graybar Electric Company, Inc.’s award for innovation[3].
In Europe , the former Burndy Europe, FCI's Electrical Power Interconnect Division is now part of the Sicame Group and well known as SBI Connectors Espana.