General Cable Historical Highlights
General Cable Corporation was originally incorporated in New Jersey in 1927. At that time it brought together the plant facilities and manufacturing experience of several older companies founded in the 1800s, including Phillips Wire and Safety Cable Company and Standard Underground Cable, founded by George Westinghouse.
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1844 - Supplied the insulated wire to Samuel Morse for his historic communication between Washington and Baltimore.
1882 - Manufactured a 7-conductor line to link the U.S. Capitol with the State, War and Navy Buildings.
1886 - Supplied wire to light the Statue of Liberty twice—first in 1886 and again for the Centennial celebration in 1986.
1893 - Produced 145 miles of cable for installation under New York City sidewalks and a 3,000 volt cable for the first Chicago World's Fair.
1922 - Invented Romex® Brand* non-metallic sheathed cable at the company's Rome, New York, facility. (*A trademark formerly owned by General Cable, now owned by Southwire Company.)
1927 - After officially incorporating in New Jersey, the Company designed a distinctive identity by which it would be known to its many customers, suppliers, investors and associates. The trademark logo represented three lengths of cable overlaid on one another, with the words “General Cable” on each length.
1929 - Produced the first 75,000-volt submarine cable in the United States for the Delaware River Crossing. It was manufactured in 4,050-foot lengths – the longest ever without joints.
1935 - Supplied 100% of the cable for the power transmission line from the Hoover Dam to Los Angeles—1,626 conductor miles.
1942 - Produced a series of wartime posters for the World War II Home-Front Campaign to build morale, to speed production and to encourage economy and conservation of critical materials, which were distributed to the armed forces, government officials and manufacturing plants involved in the war efforts.
1943 - Manufactured 140 miles of hollow tube designed to transport 120 million gallons of diesel fuel between England and France for the D-Day invasion — Code name: "Operation Pluto." PLUTO stood for Pipe Line Under The Ocean.
1945 - Produced 80% of the battlefield telephone wire used by the Allies and 50% of the Navy's power and communications cable.
1961 – Produced the control and communication cable for the first group of Minutemen Missile Bases.
1964 – Adopted a new logo to reinforce and promote the letters “GCC” as the accepted abbreviation for General Cable Corporation.
1967 – Supplied power cable to four THUMS (Texaco, Humble, Union, Mobile and Shell) man-made offshore islands at Long Beach, California, used for drilling and pumping fluid from oil-rich wells back to the mainland.
1969 – Selected a new type style as the new signature for General Cable with a new triad symbol modernized from the 1927 trademark. The symbol was no longer three lengths of cable, but rather suggested strands of wire being cabled together or tapes or shields being applied to cable core.
1970 – Installed the highest underground distribution line at Pikes Peak, Colorado. Seven miles of cable buried beneath unpaved mountain roads furnishes electrical energy to three installations including a medical research lab atop the 14,110-foot summit.
1971 – Supplied hundreds of miles of power and communications cable to link the control facilities with the launch platforms at Cape Canaveral.
1972 – Manufactured and installed 14 circuit miles of 230kV high-voltage underground transmission cable at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
1976 - Developed, manufactured and installed an optical fiber cable, over one mile in length, at the U.S. Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center to provide a high-speed data link connecting rocket engine test sites to a central data process facility.
1977 – Designed, developed and manufactured a 5.6 mile optical fiber cable that GTE installed in California as the world’s first lightwave communications system to provide regular telephone service to the public.
1979 – Changed the Company name to GK Technologies because “General Cable no longer described the high technology Company we are today.”
1981 – Acquired by Penn Central Corporation.
1985 – Supplied the wire and cable to the Marsden Point Oil Refinery located at the entrance to Whangarei Harbour in Northland, New Zealand.
1986 - Supplied wire to light the Statue of Liberty for the Centennial celebration.
1990 – Acquired the Carol Cable Company and the industry leading Carol® Brand cord, cordset and automotive product lines.
1991 – Supplied medium-voltage aluminum cable and armored cable for power, control and signaling applications for the AVE high-speed railway system connecting Madrid to Seville, Spain.
1992 – Supplied the wire and cable to build the infrastructure for the Barcelona Olympic Games and the Seville World’s Fair.
1994 – Acquired by Wassall PLC, a British Holding Company.
1995 – Supplied all of the electrical and communications cable for the National Museum of New Zealand. Te Papa Tongarewa, located in downtown Wellington, is one of the most prominent and architecturally stunning buildings in New Zealand and one of the largest museums in the world.
1996 - Supplied wire and cable to the Olympic Stadium for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia.
1997 - Began public trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, May 16th.
1998 – Produced a hybrid copper and fiber optic cable to provide electricity and communications to the guard station at the top of Mount Rushmore. The cable jacket was custom designed for long-term outdoor survival in the rugged South Dakota weather and its pinkish tan color blends in with the environment.
1999 - Acquired BICC Energy Cables which provided access to new markets and businesses. The Company changed its name to BICCGeneral and added Anaconda®, BICC® and Brand Rex Brands to it product line.
2000 - Supplied on-board fiber optic cable for the ongoing requirements and maintenance of the International Space Station program.
2001 – Completed a major Company transformation to strengthen its leadership position in the development, design, manufacture, marketing and distribution of copper, aluminum and fiber optic wire and cable products for the communications, energy, industrial and specialty markets.
2002 – Supplied the portable power cable for the 2002 Winter Olympic games in Salt Lake City, Utah, to distribute power to environmentally-friendly diesel generators used for the television coverage in remote areas where critical power was not available.
2003 – Provided all the communications wire and cable for the Cincinnati Reds at the great American Ball Park.
2004 – Supplied the NextGen™ Blolite™ air blown fiber system to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, as the building required a cabling infrastructure to support state-of-the-art information technologies now and well into the future.
2005 – Acquired Silec, a $250-million leading energy and industrial business in France with a global position, Helix/HiTemp, a $30-million U.S. manufacturer of high-end enterprise network products, as well as BERU S.A., a Cuernavaca, Mexico business with a strategic location for future growth initiatives in the country’s expanding automotive aftermarket.
2006 – Acquired E.C.N. Cable, a Spanish manufacturer of transmission and power cables with sales of approximately $72 million.
2007 – Acquired NSW, a global offshore cable supplier in Germany, Phelps Dodge International Corporation (PDIC), a $1.2 billion wire and cable manufacturer with leading market positions in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, and businesses in India and China.