British Thomson-Houston (BTH) was a British Engineering company, founded in 1894 to manufacture in the UK, under licence, products patented by an American company (which was to become General Electric).

BTH was based in Rugby, Warwickshire although it had factories in Coventry, Birmingham, Willesden and later Larne in Northern Ireland.

BTH made electric lamps, motors, generators and meters. Very quickly the product range expanded. At some time or other, practically every type of electric-powered device was produced by BTH at Rugby, and at their other factories. The company diversified into making turbines in 1904.

British Thomson-Houston played a major role in the development of the jet engine—Frank Whittle's Power Jets company built the world's first prototype jet engine at the BTH works in Rugby in 1937. Development was also carried out at the company's works in Lutterworth.

Holography was also invented at the BTH site in Rugby, by the Hungarian scientist Dennis Gabor in 1947.

In the 1950s, BTH became part of Associated Electrical Industries which was, in turn, absorbed by GEC ten years later. The heavy engineering interests of GEC were merged into GEC Alsthom, now Alstom. The remaining parts of GEC are now known as Marconi plc.

External link

• A detailed history of BTH (http://www.marconi.com/html/about/britishthomsonhoustonhistory.htm)
• The industrial history of Rugby (http://www.rugby-local-history.org.uk/indus.html)