At its peak, Ferranti was a significant player in power grid systems, defense electronics, and computing, and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

The company had an extensive presence in the defense sector, manufacturing advanced cockpit displays, radar transmitters, inertial navigation systems, and avionics for military aircraft, including the Tornado fighter jet.

Ferranti’s global footprint extended beyond the UK, with factories and branch plants in Scotland, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Germany, and the United States.

Additionally, Ferranti Thistle F.C., originally founded in 1943, evolved into Livingston F.C., a team competing in the Scottish Professional Football League.

Despite being a prime exponent of alternating current, Ferranti became an important supplier to many electric utility firms and power-distribution companies for both AC and DC meters.

[3] For the next eleven years the company was run by receiver managers and Dr. Ferranti was effectively excluded from commercial financial strategies.

He spent much of this period working in partnership with the likes of J.P. Coats of Paisley on cotton spinning machinery and Vickers on re-superheating turbines.

In 1910, Dr. Ferranti made a presidential speech to the IEE addressing this issue, but it would be another sixteen years before the commencement of the National Grid in 1926.

[6] High voltage power transformers became an important product for Ferranti;[3] some of the largest types weighed over a hundred tons.

Dr. Ferranti's son Vincent joined the transformer department as manager in 1921 and was instrumental in expanding the work started by his father.

[4] In 1935, Ferranti purchased a disused wire drawing mill at Moston: from here it manufactured many "brown goods" such as televisions, radios, and electric clocks.

By 1974, Ferranti had become an important supplier to the defence industry, but its power transformer division was making losses, creating acute financial problems.

[3] In the post-war era, this became a large segment of the company, with various branches supplying radar sets, avionics and other military electronics, both in the UK and the various international offices.

[3] After the war they set up Ferranti Research to complement this business which grew to employ 8,000 staff in 8 locations, becoming the birthplace of the Scottish electronics industry,[9] and a major contributor to company profitability.

[11] Today the Crewe Toll site (now part of Leonardo S.p.A.) leads the consortium providing the Euroradar CAPTOR radar for the Eurofighter Typhoon.

From the early 1970s, it was delivering the Laser Rangefinder and Marked Target Seeker (LRMTS) for the Jaguar and Harrier fleets, and later for Tornado.

Its TIALD Pod (Thermal Imaging Airborne Laser Designator) has been in almost constant combat operation on the Tornado since it was rushed into service during the first Gulf War.

It later dropped this allegation and was awarded $23 million; the court judged that the MSD-2000 "had a real or substantial chance of succeeding had GEC not tortuously intervened ... and had the companies, which were bound by the Collaboration Agreement, faithfully and diligently performed their continuing obligations thereunder to press and promote the case for MSD-2000.

Although a small part of Ferranti's empire, the computer division was nevertheless highly visible and operated out of a former steam locomotive factory in West Gorton.

The deal setting up ICT excluded Ferranti from the commercial sector of computing, but left the industrial field free.

[18] Ferranti had been involved in the production of electronic devices, including radio valves, cathode-ray tubes and germanium semiconductors for some time before it became the first European company to produce a silicon diode, in 1955.

[30] In 1987 Ferranti purchased International Signal and Control (ISC), a United States defence contractor based in Pennsylvania.

Unknown to Ferranti, ISC's business primarily consisted of illegal arms sales started at the behest of various US clandestine organizations.

In December 1991 James Guerin, founder of ISC and co-chairman of the merged company, pleaded guilty before the federal court in Philadelphia to fraud committed both in the US and UK.

Eventually it set up branch-plants in Edinburgh (Silverknowes, Crewe Toll, Gyle, Granton and Robertson Avenue factories, plus its own hangar facility at Turnhouse Airport), Dalkeith, Aberdeen, Dundee, Kinbuck (near Dunblane), Bracknell, Barrow in Furness and Cwmbran as well as Germany and the United States (inc. Ferranti International Controls Corporation in Sugar Land, Texas) and several British Commonwealth countries including Canada, Australia and Singapore.

Products manufactured by Ferranti Defence Systems included cockpit displays (moving map, head-down, head-up) video cameras and recorders, gunsight cameras, motion detectors, pilot's night vision goggles, integrated helmets, and pilot's stick controls.

On the Tornado aircraft, Ferranti supplied the radar transmitter, inertial navigation system, LRMTS, TIALD pod, mission recording equipment, and cockpit displays.

The company has over 200 employees that manufacture BT's public phones, oil pumps for large industrial vehicles, electric motors for motorbility solutions, electronics, and small MOD equipment.