 |
The BOC Group’s history begins six years before the company was founded. In 1880, the brothers Arthur and Leon Brin took out their first patents on a chemical process for separating oxygen. Six years later they founded Brin’s Oxygen Company.
Oxygen’s earliest commercial use was restricted to the theatre – in powering the limelight box, or "magic lantern", used for the popular lantern lectures of the time, and for providing the limelight in theatres and music halls. |
The company, renamed The British Oxygen Company in 1906, achieved its first breakthrough into widespread industrial use with the introduction of the oxyacetylene welding process in the early 20th Century. The Brin brothers' persistence ultimately ensured a vital role for oxygen in all kinds of modern industries and sciences – from food and medicine to engineering and computer technology. |