Company Timeline
- 1890s
- 1900s
- 1910s
- 1920s
- 1930s
- 1940s
- 1950s
- 1960s
- 1970s
- 1980s
- 1990s
- 2000s+
1892 Haynes and his family moved to Kokomo, where he became the manager of the gas plant.
1893 Elwood attended the Chicago World’s Fair, where he saw a gasoline-powered engine. He then purchased a one-cylinder, one-horsepower engine and attached it to a carriage he built in his kitchen. After doing considerable damage to the floor and filling the room with smoke, Haynes decided he needed a different facility to continue his experiment. Haynes hired brothers Elmer and Edgar Apperson for 40 cents an hour to construct the vehicle.
1894 “The ‘Pioneer’,” as Haynes called it, was ready for its first test run. The car was towed by a horse and buggy (to avoid frightening horses on the busy Kokomo streets) out into the countryside on the Pumpkinvine Pike. With Haynes at the controls, the car traveled about six miles at a speed approaching six or seven miles per hour – becoming one of the first cars in the country to achieve such a feat.
1898 Elwood Haynes and the Apperson brothers formed a partnership known as the Haynes-Apperson Automobile Company and started production of their automobile. The Haynes-Apperson automobiles were known for their long-distance running capability.
1902 The two Apperson brothers split from Haynes to start a company of their own. Haynes quite his job at the oil and gas company to focus on his business.
1905 The company was renamed the Haynes Automobile Company. He continued to seek both mechanical and metallurgical improvements for his automobiles, for which he received eight patents.
1907 Elwood Haynes receives a patent for an cobalt-based alloy he created. It is used for cutlery, dental instruments, automobile spark plugs, and other applications. He later named the metal STELLITE®. The name was derived from the Latin word for star, “Stella,” which Haynes considered appropriate because of their bright, non-tarnishing surface. This metallurgical invention of these alloys is regarded by some to be more important than his automobile invention.
1912 The United States Patent Office informs Haynes that he will be awarded two patents for his more advanced version of the STELLITE® alloys. Elwood Haynes forms Haynes Stellite Works on Union Street in Kokomo, Indiana. The four employees begin producing his STELLITE® alloy for use in machine tools, dental equipment, surgical scalpels, and cutlery.
1915 Elwood Haynes and two local businessmen, Richard Ruddell and James C. Patten, incorporate the business as Haynes Stellite Company.
1916 Lindsay Street property is acquired, expanding the business under the leadership of James Patten, the plant manager.
1920 Union Carbide purchases the Company.
1921 A patent is granted for a nickel-molybdenum alloy composition range, which allows the development of many proprietary alloys, including HASTELLOY® B and A alloys.
1922 HASTELLOY® trade name is invented. The name was created by taking letters from HAYNES STELLITE ALLOY = HASTELLOY®. The hard-facing process is also invented. This process involves welding a surface layer of STELLITE® alloys over parts of tools and machinery that are subject to wear and abrasion.
1929 A new casting foundry is built to manufacture products for the growing chemical processing, petrochemical, and pharmaceutical industries that use the newly introduced HASTELLOY® alloys.
1937 The precision casting process is used to make parts, such as dental restorations and surgical bone pins. This process, also known as the “lost wax” or investment casting process, would lead to what might be considered the most important period of growth for us.
1945 One hundred acres of land south of the main plant are purchased and become the Defenbaugh Street Operations, producing wrought alloys. This is a critical turning point because wrought products would eventually constitute the whole business of Haynes International.
1948 Defenbaugh Street Operations’ R-1 building is constructed. It houses a melting furnace, a steam hammer forge, a three-high mill for hot rolling plate and a two-high mill for hot rolling sheet, a 24-inch bar mill, and a 10-inch bar mill. Most of this equipment is still in operation today.
1956 Manufacturing capabilities are expanded with the addition of the vacuum induction melting (VIM) facilities, which begin supplying General Motors with 360,000 pounds of investment casting remelt bar annually.
1957 The construction of the Park Avenue office complex, as well as centralized technology laboratories, an R&D test facility, and a technical library is completed. To retain its commanding position in the high-performance sheet market, a new Sendzimer sheet cold mill is installed.
1958 The purchase of a 2000-ton Birdsboro forge press is needed to reduce billet conversion costs. The forge press proves to be very crucial to the growth of the wrought alloy operations during this period.
1963 Due to the rapid growth of air-melted alloys, a 15-ton Swindell electric arc furnace is added and immediately scheduled for production.
1964 A new 5-ton Stokes vacuum melt furnace begins operating.
1965 United Steel Workers begin a two-year contract for hourly employees.
The 150,000-sq.-ft. Schloeman cold strip mill begins operating on the south side of Defenbaugh Street. This greatly expands the production of sheet, coil, and strip products.
Showing its commitment to research and development, the Technology Department expands to more than 200 employees.
1967 Electro slag remelting (ESR) capability for wrought alloys is introduced. This results in considerable yield improvements, enhanced alloy hot workability, and overall quality improvements.
1970 Cabot Corporation purchases the Company. As a measure of respect for tradition, Cabot management continues the “Stellite Division.”The argon-oxygen decarburization (AOD) process is added and dramatically expands the applications for the Stellite Division’s corrosion-resistant products in the chemical process industry.
The Brussels, Belgium, sales office is opened, marking our first sales office in Europe. Additional European sales offices and service centers will follow.
1971 HASTELLOY® S, HAYNES® 718, 625, and 75 alloys are introduced. For the first time in 50 years, we begin to produce a significant volume of alloys, which have neither been invented nor commercially introduced by us.
1975 Nickel Contor GB formed in Corby, Northamptonshire.
1976 A service center opens in California to focus more efforts on value-added services. Processing equipment includes both laser and water-jet cutting machines. Additional U.S. service centers and sales offices will open.
1977 The Tubular Products Manufacturing Facility in Arcadia, Louisiana, opens to help support the growing level of tubular product sales in the chemical processing industry.
1978 Lille, France service center opened.
1980 The UK facility changed its name to Cabot alloys UK Limited.
1981 Due to significant demand for superalloy products, the four-high Steckel mill is installation began, creating opportunities to increase market share for both high-temperature sheet and wide, corrosion-resistant alloy plate products.
1982 4-Hi installation finished, which is still the largest, most powerful Stekel mill devoted to the rolling of nickel- and cobalt-base superalloys.
1983 A facility that manufactures round products opens in Openshaw in the United Kingdom. The Corby service center is subsequently moved there. This is our first manufacturing facility outside of the United States.
1985 Cabot Corporation sells the Stellite Hard-facing Division.
1987 After the sale of the Stellite Division, the remainder of the Kokomo-based company is named Haynes International, Inc.
1987 The Corby UK center changed to Haynes International Ltd in February 1987.
1989 The investment banking firm of Morgan, Lewis, Githens, and Ahn, purchases Haynes International.
1997 The Blackstone Group investment banking firm purchases Haynes International.
1999 Haynes Singapore opens, marking our first sales office in Asia. Additional Asian sales offices and service centers will follow.
2004 Seeking to expand our wire business, we purchase the assets of the Branford Wire Company in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and change the name to the Wire Products Manufacturing Facility.
2007 We complete an initial public offering, become a public company, and are listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. (HAYN)
2012 We celebrate 100 years of innovation.
2024 On November 21, 2024, Haynes was acquired by Acerinox, a leading global company in the manufacturing and distribution of stainless steel and high-performance alloys, through its wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary – North American Stainless (“NAS”). Together, Haynes and VDM Metals will form Acerinox’s High-Performance Alloys (HPA) Division in the future.
“A man’s work in life is not very great at best, when compared with the sum total of human effort, and after all,
it is the good that we may be able to do for our fellow men and not the glory of achievement that really counts.” — Elwood Haynes
The Life of Our Founder, Elwood Haynes
Early Years
Elwood Haynes was born in Portland, Indiana, on October 14, 1857. He was the fifth of ten children of Hilinda Sophia (Haines) and Judge Jacob March Haynes, a strong disciplinarian. His paternal grandfather, Henry Haynes was a gunsmith and mechanic, and he tutored Elwood in metallurgy.
Elwood showed an early interest in chemistry and metallurgy. At age 15, with his grandfather’s help, he invented an apparatus and succeeded in melting brass, cast iron, and high-carbon steel in his blower furnace. His early experiments and studies were about the fundamental properties of matter and mixing compounds to create different alloys.
Haynes attended public schools through eighth grade. His parents often criticized him for lacking ambition and insisted that he seek employment. When Portland’s first public school was opened in 1876, he returned to school at the age of 19 and completed two more years of education. Elwood obtained admission to the Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science in Worchester, Massachusetts in 1878. His senior thesis was entitled, “The Effect of Tungsten on Iron and Steel.” It laid out the basic principles of what would later become his greatest advances in metallurgy.
Career
After graduation, Haynes returned to Portland to teach. He eventually became the principal of Portland High School, but left to conduct post-graduate work in Chemistry, Biology, and German at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. After the death of his mother in 1885, he left the university without completing his second year and took a position as the head of the Chemistry Department at the newly established Eastern Indiana Normal School and Commercial College (now Ball State University).
His personal life was also developing. After a ten-year courtship, Elwood Haynes and Bertha Lantermann were married in October 1887. The couple had, Bernice, born in 1892, and a son, March, born in 1896. The two children were well-educated and grew up to assist their father in his enterprises.
With the discovery of natural gas near Portland in 1886, Haynes left his teaching job and became superintendent for the Portland Natural Gas and Oil Company. In 1890, he was appointed field superintendent for the Indiana Natural Gas Company of Chicago, which had its headquarters in Greentown. Its Board of Directors “discovered that Elwood Haynes knew more about natural gas than anyone in the state.” While working for the company, Haynes invented a vapor thermostat and discovered how to dry and prevent pipelines from freezing.
When the company constructed the first long-distance gas line from eastern Indiana to Chicago, Haynes oversaw the design and construction of the pipeline, as well as the creation of the wells for pumping the gas. During the construction of the pipeline, Haynes took numerous buggy rides between the two states. This is where he conceived the idea of a “horseless carriage” and began preparing drawings for its construction.
Contributions
As he grew older and less involved with his businesses, he became more involved in the community. He was an outspoken advocate of prohibition and made substantial donations to the Prohibition Party. In 1916, Haynes ran an unsuccessful campaign in Indiana for the U.S. Senate as a prohibition candidate. He also became increasingly philanthropic with large donations to his Presbyterian Church, as well as scholarships to the Worcester Institute. Haynes founded the YMCA in Kokomo, where he taught swimming lessons and regularly took underprivileged boys to movies and dinners. He was elected the president of the national YMCA in 1919 and served two, one-year terms. In 1920, he was appointed to the Indiana State Board of Education, where he advocated increased state funding for vocational education.
In 1925 he attended the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce at a New York City auto exhibition, where he, the Apperson brothers, and other automotive pioneers were awarded gold medals for their contributions to the auto industry.
April 13, 1925, at the age of 67, Elwood Haynes died in his home in Kokomo. All business in the city was suspended for an hour during his funeral.
