[17][3][2] When World War II began, German patents were voided in the UK, which meant Edwards was cut off from their suppliers.

[2][18][3][19] Edwards purchased Italian freeze-drying equipment manufacturer Alto Vuoto SpA in 1954, followed by the Shoreham factory of former subcontractor J H Holmes and Son Ltd in 1958.

[17] BOC Group's purchase of Edwards in 1968 was followed by international expansion, particularly into Asia, and investment at the Crawley, Eastbourne, Shoreham and Burgess Hill sites.

It was based in Nailsea before moving to Clevedon, UK to add to Edwards' semiconductor manufacturing environmental abatement technology.

[24] This was followed by the purchase of the Hick Hargreaves vacuum ejector and deaerator units; Wilhelm Klein GmbH; Stokes piston pump operations, and Hibon Inc for £12.8 million from Smiths Group.

[28] Linde AG purchased BOC in 2006 for €12.4 billion, selling Edwards to CCMP Capital and its Asian fund in 2007 for US$901 million.

A new, Cayman Island-based holding company called Edwards Group Ltd was listed on NASDAQ in 2012 via ADS under the ticker symbol EVAC, with a US$100 million IPO.

Most of Edwards' UK manufacturing capacity was moved, with abatement systems remaining in Clevedon, completing plans proposed under BOC in 2005.

[12] Edwards purchased Brooks Automation's CTI-Cryogenics and Polycold branded cryopump operations based in Chelmsford and Monterrey for US$675 million in 2018.

During World War II, the technology was further perfected and expanded to freeze-dry instant coffee, but also blood plasma and penicillin.

This included but wasn't limited to, the development of radar transmitters and receivers used in operations, glass coating of binoculars and windscreens, infrared systems, used for night flying and operations, foil coating, which confused radar systems and the introduction of freeze-drying to remove moisture, applied to various pharmaceutical processes.

[43] The first integrated circuit or “chip” came to the market at the end of the 1950s, and vacuum pumps again played an important role in their production.

These molecular turbopumps use magnetically levitated bearings, which eliminate the risk of vacuum contamination, require less maintenance, and feature lower noise and vibration levels.

The compact disk was invented in the 1980s, initially to store and play digital audio recordings but a few years later also as general data storage.

[17] The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change came into force in 1994, driving the need for environmental solutions in the electronics industry.

Lithium-ion batteries are a rapidly growing market, that also requires large amounts of vacuum in various stages of their production.

Edwards CTI-Cryogenics and Edwards Polycold cryopumps and cryochillers play their role in cryogenic fields: MRI machines that uses liquid helium and require cryogenic cooling, storage of large quantities of food, freezing of blood and tissues samples, and semiconductors, as their technology and structures become more complex.

In 2005, Nominet determined the domain name bocedwards.co.uk had been abusively registered by Eaton Engineering (Herts) Ltd and ordered that it be transferred to The BOC Group Ltd, the then owners of Edwards.

Information was provided about Hoffman to Edwards for due diligence, under a non disclosure agreement, in order to progress the acquisition.

[46] Hoffman alleged Edwards employed monopoly practices in breach of the Sherman Act because it had 70% share of the integrated vacuum pump frame systems market in the US and suppressed competition, imposing non-compete covenants on its suppliers and engaged in employee intimidation; customer threats, and bad faith litigation.

Judgement declined to accept Edwards' application of Noerr–Pennington doctrine to dismiss Hoffman's [48] anti competition counterclaim.