In 1883 inventor Albert Butz developed the process of automatic temperature control, connecting a thermostat to a spring motor to operate home furnace dampers according to changes in air temperature. In 1885 he filed for his first temperature control patent, and formed the Butz Thermo-Electric Regulator Company. Butz's company was incorporated in 1886. In 1888 he sold his business, which was incorporated as the Consolidated Temperature Controlling Company. The firm was renamed the Electric Thermostat Company in 1892, and the Electric Heat Regulator Company in 1893.
William R. Sweatt arrived in Minneapolis from Fargo, North Dakota, in 1891. He started the Sweatt Manufacturing company, building wooden wheelbarrows, grocery boxes, and wooden washing machines at a factory in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. Sweatt invested in the Consolidated Temperature Controlling Company at about this time, and was given a seat on its board of directors. In 1893 he was named secretary-treasurer of the firm, and the directors asked him to take over operation of the company. By 1902 Sweatt had bought out the original investors and had secured complete ownership of the firm. The company was renamed Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company in 1912.
Honeywell Heating Specialty Company was established in 1906 at Wabash, Indiana by Mark C. Honeywell, and manufactured water-heating equipment. The firm was reorganized and its name changed to Honeywell Heating Specialties Company in 1916, and it began to produce automatic temperature controls. In 1927 the Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company, then a manufacturer of automatic controls for coal-fired furnaces, and Honeywell Heating Specialties Company, a manufacturer of oil burner controls, merged to form the Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company. The headquarters of the new firm was established in Minneapolis, with W.R. Sweatt chairman of the board and Mark C. Honeywell president. Manufacturing was continued in both Minneapolis and Wabash. The corporate name was changed in 1964 to Honeywell Inc.
Minneapolis-Honeywell became a defense contractor in 1940. Of particular note was its development of an electronic autopilot, which came to be used on all types of U.S. bombers during World War II. It also became a supplier of autopilots and other controls for civilian aircraft, and later was involved in the space program. In 1986 Honeywell increased its involvment in the aerospace industry with its purchase of Sperry Aerospace.
Honeywell entered the computer business via a 1955 joint venture with Raytheon Corp known as Datamatic Corporation. The company's first computer system, the D-1000, weighed 25 tons, took up 6,000 square feet, and cost $1.5 million. A 1970 merger agreement with General Electric Company resulted in the creation of Honeywell Information Systems, Inc., a new computer company combining the computer business of the two parent companies. Honeywell Information Systems manufactured mainframe computers. Honeywell later began to gradually exit the computer business, and by 1991 was completely out of it.
Honeywell Inc. merged with AlliedSignal Inc., of Morris Township, New Jersey, in the Fall of 1999. Headquarters of the combined company was established at Morris Township, and the firm carried the Honeywell name. The new company had operations in 95 countries and had 1998 sales of $8.4 billion. Lawrence A. Bossidy, chairman and CEO of AlliedSignal, became the new company's chairman, and Michael R. Bonsignore, chairman and CEO of Honeywell, was made the new company's CEO.
The collection relates primarily to Honeywell's control systems business, especially to thermostats and related controls for home heating plants, and to autopilots and related aeronautical equipment and devices for airplanes. A smaller portion of the collection is concerned with the company's information systems (computer) business. The records were reorganized in 2002 into fifteen record series based upon type of material and/or corporate function.
The collection includes alphabetically-ordered subject files; product catalogs and manuals; patent files; promotional and sales-related materials; product literature; and photographs of company buildings and facilities, executives, overseas offices and operations, and products. There are scrapbooks and portfolios featuring examples of Honeywell advertising, especially from the 1930s through the 1950s. The collection contains company-produced newsletters and journals, including four reels of microfilmed in-house newsletters (formerly cataloged separately). There are thirty-two reels of microfilmed engineering correspondence; audiotapes and videocassettes, motion pictures, and filmstrips; some financial and stockholder information; and material relating to Honeywell's overseas offices and operations. "Historical Files" consist largely of background information gathered in connection with Honeywell's observance of its centennial anniversary (1985), and also includes transcripts of oral history interviews conducted in 1973 in Wabash, Indiana. There are some photographs of and files relating to employees and employee activities, but there are no "personnel records," per se. There is information about Honeywell mergers and acquisitions, and a series of records of predecessor, subsidiary, and related companies.
Much of the material focuses on Honeywell's aerospace and defense work, including its development and marketing of autopilots to the United States Air Force and to private industry, and to its involvement in the space program (projects Gemini and Apollo). There are newspaper clippings and other materials related to the so-called "Honeywell Project," a Twin Cities-based protest effort which involved the periodic staging of demonstrations at Honeywell's corporate headquarters in protest of the company's work as a defense contractor.
These documents are organized into the following sections:
Annual reports, collective labor agreements, and a variety of other printed materials generated by Honeywell Inc. and its precedessors are in the Minnesota Historical Society library.
Other Honeywell corporate records are at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the
Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics,
persons or places should
Quotation or publication, beyond the fair use provisions of the copyright law, requires written permission.
Accession number: 13,898; 14,466; 15,589; 15,674; 15,744; 15,811
Processed by: David B. Peterson, April 1989; additions June 1993 and August 2002
Catalog ID number: 09-00037498
A series of articles by Prof. John E. Arnold, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.).
Honeywell Project was an organization of anti-war/anti-nuclear weapons activists who staged demonstrations at Honeywell's general offices in Minneapolis over a period of some twenty years in protest of the company's defense contracting business.
See also Honeywell Control Systems Fact Books and Honeywell Information Systems Fact Books.
Concerns property on Broad Street, Philadelphia--Brown Instruments property?
This file contains clippings relating to Honeywell's overseas operations and facilities.
This publication bills itself as "A magine devoted to the interests of the automatic heating industry; published by Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Co."
This newsletter was published by the Residential Technology/Quality Assurance Group.
This newsletter was published for the heating and cooling industry.
These are typewritten literary manuscripts for publication in Honeywell magazines and newsletters, trade journals, and newspapers, and as stand-alone publications. Many of the articles concern residential heating, cooling, and humidification. There are biographical sketches of Honeywell executives, and there is information about the company's W.R. Sweatt Historical Library.