The company was a leading producer of Babbit bearings and a significant US government defense contractor.
In 1953 it acquired 51% of Transistor Products Inc., and with other acquisitions such as the German Intermetall in 1955 (a company founded in 1952 by pioneering German physicist and developer of the first "European" transistor Herbert Mataré, and subsequently sold to telecommunications giant ITT in 1965) developed a semiconductor division.
Clevite won defense contracts for some of its products and opened a new ordnance plant in 1967.
[3] Clevite purchased Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1960 and continued operating it until selling it (again to ITT as it had done with Intermetall) in 1968.
In 1969, Clevite was acquired by Gould-National Batteries,[4] a firm one-quarter its size.