Vishay BLH corporate roots grow deep in tradition and American Industrial History

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Following in a rich tradition of industrial innovation, BLH remains the technology leader by developing precision transducers and instrumentation uniquely tailored to the process weighing and web tension measurement industries. Our unique, cylindrical KIS® Beams (load cells) reject side, torsion, and torque forces to provide the "cleanest", most accurate weight measurement signal possible. Patented HTU Transducers measure both horizontal (X) and vertical (Y) force components simultaneously to precisely calculate resultant web tension force.

Precision load cells and transducers coupled with our "Expert" Series of process instrumentation produce the most accurate, reliable measurement systems in the world. "Expert" Series Indicators complement our unparalleled load cell products by adding diagnostic shift, drift, overload, and noise testing to confirm premium performance. Other benefits of "Expert" Series Instruments include individual load cell displays, multi-channel synchronous signal processing, and degrade mode operation, which allows continued system operation if a load cell cable is damaged.

Today, BLH is the technology leader and a quality manufacturer of process/inventory weighing and web tension measurement systems. In our fully integrated facility, we manufacture strain gage sensors, force transducers, web tension transducers, and precision electronic instrumentation. We run a state-of-the-art machine shop and NIST traceable (ANSI/NCSL Z540-1-1994) calibration facility to produce the highest performing, highest quality systems available anywhere. Headquartered in Canton, MA, with sales and manufacturing facilities located throughout the world.

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BLH corporate roots grow deep in tradition and American Industrial History. The ‘B’ in BLH actually stands for Baldwin; the original Baldwin Locomotive Company. Starting with a jewelry firm in 1831 Philadelphia, Matthias W. Baldwin then made the technological leap into steam driven cylinders. In 1883, commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum, Baldwin produced a miniature locomotive for an in-house exhibition. The rest, as they say, is history. Eventually, Baldwin built more steam locomotives than any other manufacturer in the world.

So how did we go from steam locomotives to process weighing and web tension measurement?

Since the beginning of trade, some kind of measure of weight had to be established. Not only did this measure have to be uniform; it also had to be honest. In order to weigh or measure anything, there has to be a standard for comparison. The equal arm balance scale or the unequal arm beam scale has been used for thousands of years as the standard for comparison. It is still, by far, the most commonly used technique in the world for determination of weight. However, approximately sixty years ago a novel technique was invented to make electronic weight measurements reliable and economically practical. This invention was the resistance wire strain gage. The strain gage consists of a filament of thin foil or wire, which changes resistance when stressed.

Dr. Arthur C. Ruge of M.I.T. and E. E. Simmons of CalTech are credited with the simultaneous, but independent invention of the strain gage in 1937/38. Since each inventor had an assistant working on their project, and, since a total of four people worked on the invention, the trade name for this strain gage became SR-4® (Simmons-Ruge-4 people). Professor DeForest, an inventor in his own right who produced a mechanical strain gage, encouraged Dr. Ruge in his work. From this relationship between two educators/scientists grew the Ruge-DeForest partnership which manufactured strain gages sold by Baldwin in the 1940's. In 1939, Ruge had signed an agreement with Baldwin Locomotive Works whereby he would design and manufacture SR-4 ® strain gages to be marketed by Baldwin. This arrangement continued until 1955 when Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton (BLH), which had acquired Baldwin Locomotive Works, bought Ruge-DeForest, Inc.

With the strain gage as his technology base, Dr. Ruge quickly produced and patented the world’s first load (load cells) pressure, and torque transducers.

Innovation Through Applied Technology