About Us

Over a Century of Comfort and Safety

Over 100 years, needs change, technology changes, and people change. For a company to maintain leadership in the same industry for over a century requires an ongoing balance of employee dedication and customer satisfaction.

The story begins with a man and an idea. The man is a remarkable individual named William Penn Powers. Born in 1842 and raised on the Wisconsin frontier, Powers attended the University of Wisconsin and served in the Union Army throughout the Civil War. After the War, he married and set up in business in Palmyra, Wisconsin. In 1887, he erected a new building to house his expanding heating and plumbing facility. Annoyed by the clanging of the dampers, he sought a solution to the problem of temperature control.

The idea he discovered was a regulator consisting of a diaphragm filled with a liquid that responded to temperature changes. Powers was constantly improving on his invention. Within a short time, he was selling them locally. In 1891, business was so strong that he moved to Chicago and founded the Powers Regulator Company, forerunner of today's Siemens Building Technologies.

Chicago was the right place at the right time. A bustling boom town a new city built on the ruins of the old Chicago destroyed by the fire of 1871 it epitomized the American dream of the late 19th Century.

Great changes were taking place. The census of 1890 proclaimed the closing of the frontier. As the cities filled with newer immigrants, land was at a premium. Growth was now expressed in vertical terms as skyscrapers reached ever higher.

But amid all the prosperity, there were problems. Rooms were either unacceptably cool or hot and stuffy, an ideal breeding ground for childhood diseases. The new Powers Regulator provided a solution to this problem. In the 1890s, Powers rapidly established a reputation as a dependable supplier of a quality product. Advertisements run in the 1930s carried quotes in praise of Powers systems that worked without fail for upwards of thirty years.

In the first two decades of the 20th Century, the Powers Regulator Company expanded rapidly. Its reputation for innovation and product improvement was assured with milestone installations. In 1907, the Gold Room in the Congress Hotel in Chicago became one of the first public spaces in the United States to be air-conditioned. Powers' list of installations comprised a veritable Who's Who of American high-rise buildings the Penobscot in Detroit, the Palmer House in Chicago. In 1920, the company opened a new factory comprising 40,000 square feet of space.

As the country roared through the 1920s, growth continued and buildings grew ever higher. The office towers and palatial hotels of the late 1920s were in fact substantial symbols of an economy that was rapidly weakening. In October of 1929, it cracked. As the country plunged headlong into the Great Depression, most building came to a standstill. Ironically, the Depression was to provide the catalyst for two of Powers most famous achievements the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center.

Planned in 1929 as the tallest building in the world, the Empire State Building looked to be an early casualty of the Depression. The project was headed by John J. Raskob, former Chairman of the General Motors Corporation, who pursued his dream of completing the project in the face of overwhelming odds. For more than 30 years, it was the tallest building in the world.

In the depths of the Great Depression, John D. Rockefeller announced plans for a massive building project to demonstrate his faith in America's economic revival the Radio City complex at Rockefeller Center. Designed in the Art Deco style, the structure would include the latest technological innovations. Powers Regulator Co. was selected to provide building control systems for four of the structures including the Radio City Music Hall. For many years the world's largest theater, the Music Hall was built to accommodate six million people per year. In one day alone, thirty thousand individuals would enter and exit. The air-conditioning of so vast a space had never before been attempted. Powers rose to the challenge, and the success of Rockefeller Center and the Music Hall continues to this day.

Throughout the 1930s, Powers Regulator pointed the way to future technology and extended the envelope of building control applications. The gigantic naval hospital in Philadelphia required specialized control for operating rooms. Powers controls become a part of the process controls installed in textile plants and commercial bakeries. A unique application was devised for the film drying cabinets at Warner Bros. laboratories.

In 1941, as the company celebrated its 50th birthday, the stress was on teamwork. And never would the team be tested as in the days ahead. World War II brought a sudden and dramatic shift to the priorities of the entire country. Although Powers products continued in production as essential to the national interest, much of the plant capacity was shifted to ordnance work.

The dedication of the company was recognized on July 6, 1944, when the staff received the Army-Navy "E" Award for excellence in product quality.

The return to peace spurred tremendous changes at Powers as wartime technology was integrated into modern products. Powers researchers produced the "Customized Central Control Panel" which permitted building monitoring and control from a central location.
Thermostats and other control products underwent radical redesign as new technologies permitted downsizing.

The rapid development, both inside and outside America's cities throughout the 1950s, created a need for a new philosophy in building controls. By the 1960s, Powers engineers were already working toward the development of electronic control with the System 320, the first practical multiplexing building control. By the 1970s, the computerized monitoring system made its appearance. The Powers system featured English language display on a CRT screen. Because of the ease of extension to remote locales, the system quickly became the choice for colleges, hospitals and other installations monitoring remote facilities from a central point.

Considered one of the top three companies in the building controls industry, Powers was the only such company still concentrated in family hands. Johnson Controls and Honeywell had long since become largely publicly held companies. In 1977, Mark Controls corporation saw the opportunity to make an advantageous purchase, and Powers Regulator Company became MCC Powers.

The reorganized company spent heavily on research and development. A tremendous competition was underway among the major control builders to develop the first practical, fully electronic building control system. In 1979, MCC Powers won the race with the introduction of the Powers System 600. The design of the system was revolutionary, but even more so was the engineering philosophy behind it. Realizing that the electronic age would usher in a rapid and continuing series of improvements, Powers engineers designed the System 600 as an open-ended system capable of easily assimilating upgrades without sacrificing system integrity.

Within two years, the system was enhanced with direct digital control, further extending energy management capability and reliable performance. Later stand-alone control units provided the first "smart" microprocessor-based remote panels. These permitted system expansion without the use of a host computer and enabled discrete blocks or locations to perform energy management control and alarm functions on a peer-to-peer basis.

By 1986, the parade of new developments from Powers included such features as Insight¨ software for PCs and DEC-based archiving software to permit more effective management analysis.

In 1989, Powers Smoke Control became the first such application granted UL-listing. It is especially significant that the innovative engineering philosophy adopted by Powers in the late 1970s was vindicated throughout the next decade.

While Powers competitors introduced one new system after another, creating progressive waves of obsolescence, Powers customers followed a linear path into the next generation of control capabilities.

One of the corporations that closely followed Powers progress was the giant multi-national Landis & Gyr headquartered in Zug, Switzerland. As Europe's leading building controls company, Landis & Gyr sought the opportunity to merge Powers' expertise with its own. On October 9, 1987, the plan became a reality with the formation of Landis & Gyr Powers.

In December of 1995, Landis & Gyr Powers was acquired by Electrowatt AG. Founded January 31, 1895 in Zurich, Switzerland, Electrowatt Ltd. is the holding company of a corporate group with an international presence in its three business segments: Electric Power, Engineering and Contracting and Industry.

In 1996, Landis & Gyr was merged with Staefa Control System, a subsidiary of Electrowatt, to form Landis & Staefa, Inc., a worldwide organization of HVAC controls system companies. On December 23, 1996, a bid from Siemens was accepted by Electrowatt shareholders. All anti-trust approvals for the acquisition of the industry segment of Electrowatt (including Landis & Staefa and Cerberus Pyrotronics) were received by late November 1997. Credit Suisse, holding 99% of the Electrowatt AG shares, transferred its shares to Siemens AG on December 29, 1997, completing the sale.

The acquisition was finalized on October 1, 1998, with the introduction of the new Siemens Building Technologies, Inc., comprising the former Electrowatt industry segment and related holdings within Siemens. Posting combined global revenues in excess of $3 billion, this new group became a world leader in providing building infrastructure solutions for comfort, fire alarm/life safety, security and energy efficiency, optimizing both building performance and operating cost.

The alliance with Siemens gave customers a new range of technological and cost competitive facility performance solutions, supplementing its offerings in building automation, HVAC controls, mechanical systems services, Performance-based Solutions, fire alarm and life safety, security, critical environments, systems integration, power and utilities, and facility management services. Headquartered in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, the Landis & Staefa Division of Siemens Building Technologies in North America provided total building performance solutions through its 100 company-owned offices and 13 independent field offices. In addition, the Landis & Staefa Division continued to offer Powers pneumatic products, as well as Landis & Staefa and Siemens brand end devices through its authorized wholesaler network. The division continued to aggressively support and promote Staefa Control System products through the independent Staefa dealer network, which maintained a direct reporting relationship to the Landis & Staefa Division. Worldwide, Siemens Building Technologies became one of the largest providers of building performance solutions, with more than 30,000 employees in over 100 countries.

Today, Siemens Building Technologies in North America is comprised of four new divisions: Building Automation, HVAC Products, Security Systems and Fire Safety. These divisions clearly signify Siemens Building Technologies' business activities and core competencies. They also emphasis Siemens Building Technologies' strengths and global market positions.

Siemens Building Technologies systems are at work in some of the most famous buildings across American and throughout the world. At the Jacob Javits Center in New York, in the Castle Building of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and at Duke University, where precise control is maintained in the central library and throughout the institution. The John Hancock Building in Chicago, and the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco are among the thousands of American installations where Siemens Building Technologies serves a wide diversity of control needs. In Europe, a Siemens Building Technologies system in the Louvre Museum maintains the environment critical to some of the world's art treasures. In Asia, crowds attending the races at the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club depend on the System 600 for comfort and security.

The traditions of Siemens Building Technologies that have guided us for over a century continue today. Innovation in products and services has created a reputation for advanced solutions in the controls area. Our dedication to specialized engineering to individual customer solutions has brought us to the forefront of advanced application technology, and our pride in service is reflected in an outstanding record of customer loyalty.

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