词条 | United Technologies Corporation |
释义 | United Technologies Corporation American corporation American multi-industry company with significant business concentrations in aerospace products and services, including jet engines and helicopters. Formed in 1934 as United Aircraft Corporation, it adopted its present name in 1975. Headquarters are in Hartford, Connecticut. ![]() UTC's other major units are Otis Elevator Company, which specializes in elevators, escalators, moving walks, and shuttle systems; Carrier Corporation, which makes heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning systems, building controls, and commercial and transport refrigeration equipment; and International Fuel Cells, which makes fuel cells for space and commercial uses. In 2000 UTC employed about 150,000 people, half of which were located outside the United States. The origin of UTC lies with the company formed in 1928 by William E. Boeing as Boeing Airplane&Transport Corporation, which held controlling interests in Boeing Airplane Company, Boeing Air Transport Inc., and Pacific Air Transport (see Boeing Company). Within a year the company was renamed United Aircraft and Transport Corporation and acquired a number of aircraft- and aircraft-component-manufacturing companies including Sikorsky Aviation, Stearman Aircraft, Avion (later Northrop Aircraft), Chance Vought (aircraft), Hamilton (propellers and aircraft), and Pratt & Whitney (engines). In another two years it consolidated four smaller airlines into United Airlines and made it a subsidiary. In response to legislation prohibiting the affiliation of airlines with aviation manufacturers, United Aircraft and Transport Corporation was dissolved in 1934, resulting in three separate companies. Manufacturing facilities west of the Mississippi River became Boeing Airplane Company, those east of it became United Aircraft Corporation, and all transportation services were unified as United Airlines. United Aircraft Corporation retained, among other companies, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky, HamiltonStandard (later Hamilton Sundstrand), and Chance Vought. The first three companies remained core units of United Aircraft and then UTC throughout the rest of the 20th century. Pratt & Whitney originated as the creation of the businessman Frederick B. Rentschler. In 1925 the machine-tool maker Pratt and Whitney provided Rentschler with start-up funds, idle plant space, and a company name to create an aircraft engine manufacturer. The new company's air-cooled Wasp radial piston engine, completed by the end of that year, proved far superior to the water-cooled engines of the time and became the basis for a number of piston engines and the continued growth of the company in the 1930s and '40s under United Aircraft. The great demand for Pratt&Whitney piston engines during World War II—more than 360,000 engines were shipped for the wartime effort—diverted the company from early jet-engine development, allowing its competitors General Electric and Westinghouse initially to overtake it in this area. Nevertheless, by the early 1950s Pratt & Whitney had leapfrogged the rest of the industry with its first turbojet design, the J57. About the same time, the close association of the Pratt & Whitney and Vought Aircraft units of United Aircraft began to create conflict-of-interest problems—other engine makers were reluctant to do business with Vought, and other aircraft builders were hesitant to make use of Pratt&Whitney engines. As a result, Vought Aircraft was separated from United Aircraft in 1954. In 1965 Pratt&Whitney launched a program to develop a more efficient engine for wide-body aircraft. The resulting JT9D turbofan, which introduced many new technologies in structures, aerodynamics, and materials to improve efficiency and reliability, opened a new era in commercial aviation with its application to new versions of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas transports, including the Boeing 747. In 1983 Pratt & Whitney formed IAE with German, British, Italian, and Japanese firms to build the V2500 turbofan for Airbus Industrie jetliners. The V2500 entered service in 1989 on the narrow-body Airbus A320. For military aircraft, Pratt & Whitney developed the F100 engine, which entered service in 1974 with the U.S. Air Force's F-15. It also developed the F119 engine for the stealth fighter design for the U.S. Air Force that became the Lockheed Martin (Lockheed Martin Corporation)/Boeing (Boeing Company) F-22 Raptor (first flown in 1997). In the 1990s Pratt & Whitney entered a sales-representative and technology-use agreement with NPO Energomash with respect to the latter's rocket engines. The partnership also led to the development of the RD-180 liquid-fuel rocket engine, which was chosen to power Lockheed Martin (Lockheed Martin Corporation)'s Atlas III commercial launch vehicle. The first Russian-powered Atlas III was launched in 2000. UTC's Hamilton Sundstrand unit has its roots in the formation after World War I of propeller and aircraft companies by Thomas F. Hamilton. When the Hamilton operations were acquired by United Aircraft and Transport Corporation, it was merged with Standard Steel Propeller Company (organized in 1918 as the Dicks-Luttrell Propeller Company by Thomas A. Dicks and James B. Luttrell) to form Hamilton Standard Propeller Corporation. Hamilton Standard became the leading maker of aircraft propellers, producing more than 500,000 during World War II. In 1949 the subsidiary removed Propeller from its name and began to diversify, starting with the development of aircraft fuel controls and satellite control equipment and moving on to life-support systems for the Apollo (Apollo program) Command and Lunar Modules and the space shuttle and space suits for the U.S. space program. Hamilton Sundstrand was formed in June 1999 when UTC merged Hamilton Standard with the newly acquired Sundstrand Corporation. Sundstrand had been formed in 1926 as Sundstrand Machine Tool Company from the merger of a tool company and a milling machine company, both founded in the first decade of the 20th century. By the late 1950s the company was a major supplier of systems and components to commercial and military aircraft manufacturers. Reflecting its expanded range of products, the company name was changed to Sundstrand Corporation in 1959. ![]() ![]() |
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