Textron Inc.

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Bell Helicopter Textron 206B-3 JetRanger III civil helicopter, in police service, Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.

© 1998 Textron All Rights Reserved.

Textron Inc., American multi-industry company that pioneered the conglomerate concept. Its present-day core organization includes aircraft, automotive, and industrial manufacturing segments. The firm was established in 1923 as a textile maker and acquired its present name in 1956. Headquarters are in Providence, Rhode Island.

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V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft hovering above a carrier flight deck. Developed jointly by Bell Helicopter (a subsidiary of Textron) and Boeing as a military transport, the aircraft can take off and land vertically like a helicopter or rotate its engines in midair and fly like a fixed-wing plane.

©1998 Textron All Rights Reserved.

Textron’s aircraft subsidiaries, Bell Helicopter Textron and Cessna Aircraft Company, together account for about a third of its revenues. Bell Helicopter, with headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, makes civil and military rotary-wing craft, including the commercial 206B JetRanger III, the AH-1W SuperCobra attack helicopter, and the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior armed reconnaissance helicopter. With Boeing Company it produces the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft as a military transport. Cessna, located in Wichita, Kansas, has built nearly half of the world’s general aviation aircraft in current use. It is known for its highly popular light, single-engine piston aircraft and Citation series of business jets, including the Citation X, which flies at nearly the speed of sound. Textron’s automotive segment is a leading supplier of plastic products, such as instrument panels, fuel tanks, and interior and exterior trim, for cars and light trucks. The industrial segment manufactures a variety of products from fasteners, gears, pumps, and tools to golf carts, turf-care machinery, and aviation piston engines. In 2000 Textron had about 70,000 employees and operations in about two dozen countries.

Textron was founded in 1923 by the American businessman and investor Royal Little as a textile firm under the name Special Yarns Corporation, which changed its name to Atlantic Rayon Corporation in 1935. The company achieved only marginal success until the early years of World War II, when the demand for textiles—in particular, parachutes—reached a peak. Later in the war, government contracts for textiles declined, and to increase profits Little began to integrate the company vertically so that it soon controlled all aspects of its textile business, from the processing of raw goods to the distribution of finished products. In 1945 it adopted the name Textron Incorporated, which was shortened to Textron Inc. in 1956.

As the demand for textiles further decreased following the war, Little received approval from the company’s board of directors to diversify into unrelated businesses. This conglomeration process, begun in 1952, became a model for other businesses to follow. Among Textron’s acquisitions over the next four decades were outdoor power equipment maker Homelite; Camcar, a maker of fastening systems; engine castings manufacturer CWC; golf cart manufacturer E-Z-GO; Speidel, a maker of watchbands; Sheaffer Pen; staple- and nail-gun maker Bostitch; Gorham silver company; and the conglomerates Avco Corporation and Ex-Cell-O Corporation. Textron also developed a policy of selling weak divisions, which led to the divestiture of its last textile holding in 1963.

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Lawrence Bell, American aircraft designer, standing next to a Bell P-59 airplane.

Courtesy of the Lawrence D. Bell Aviation Museum (bellaircraftmuseum.org)

Textron entered the aerospace field in 1960 when it purchased the defense units of Bell Aircraft Corporation. The acquisition included Bell Helicopter Corporation, which in less than 20 years established itself as Textron’s largest division and in 1982 became its own incorporated subsidiary with the name Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. Bell Aircraft Corporation (founded in 1935 by the American aviation designer Lawrence Dale Bell) had earned its reputation with ingenious solutions to difficult design requirements. Its successes included the first American jet aircraft, the XP-59A Airacomet fighter (first flown in 1942), and the world’s first supersonic aircraft, the experimental rocket-powered X-1 (which exceeded the speed of sound in 1947). The company became involved in rotary-wing aircraft development during World War II when Bell hired a research and design team around the American inventor Arthur Young. The work eventually led to the Bell Model 47, the first helicopter to receive a commercial license (1946).

In 1957 Bell Aircraft’s rotary-wing division was reorganized as the separate subsidiary Bell Helicopter Corporation. The company’s UH-1 Iroquois (“Huey”) helicopter, supplied to the U.S. Army, gained fame in the 1960s during the Vietnam War. Other notable products were the Bell 209 (AH-1G HueyCobra), the first attack helicopter designed for that purpose, and the civilian Bell 206 JetRanger (first flown in 1965).Its V-22 Osprey, jointly developed with Boeing and first flown in prototype in 1989, was designed to operate as a helicopter or rotate its engines and fly like a fixed-wing airplane

In 1992 Textron purchased Cessna Aircraft Company from General Dynamics Corp., which had acquired the company as a subsidiary in 1985. Cessna’s founder, the American aviator Clyde V. Cessna, began building aircraft in 1916 and in the mid 1920s was a business partner with Walter H. Beech and Lloyd Stearman in Travel Air Manufacturing Company. Cessna set up his own company in 1927 with the help of the businessman Victor Roos. The enterprise, briefly named Cessna-Roos Aircraft Company and then Cessna Aircraft Company, successfully built small planes until the start of the Great Depression forced it to stop production. The factory was reopened by Cessna’s nephews Dwane Wallace and Dwight Wallace in 1934, after which its products gained a leadership role in aviation by winning air races and setting sales records. During World War II the company was an important subcontractor and a producer of a twin-engine trainer.

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A Cessna 172S Skyhawk (also called the Cessna SP) in flight.

Adrian Pingstone

Following the war, Cessna set the standard for the private aircraft industry with a series of top-selling single- and twin-engine airplanes, notably the 140, 170, and 180 lines. In 1954 it began production of the T-37, the first primary and intermediate jet trainer for the U.S. Air Force. In 1972 the company delivered its first Citation business jet. Following the decline in sales of piston-engine private aircraft beginning in the late 1970s because of U.S. liability laws, Cessna discontinued this previously profitable line in 1986 and focused exclusively on the business jet market. Revised liability legislation induced it to resume production of updated versions of its noted piston aircraft in 1996, including the 172 Skyhawk, 182 Skylane, and the larger 206 Stationair.