Surface Combustion, Inc. is a North American manufacturer of industrial furnaces and heat treating equipment headquartered in Maumee, Ohio, in the United States.
Midland-Ross was acquired by the private equity investment firm of Forstmann Little & Company in 1986, which spun off Surface Combustion to four long term employees in 1987.
The company has been called "the IBM of the automotive industry" due to its prominence in providing equipment used to heat-treat automobiles parts.
[1] Some time prior to 1913, natural gas salesman Henry O. Loebell incorporated the Improved Appliance Company, which manufactured industrial furnaces.
[3] The firm was initially headquartered in The Bronx, New York,[5] but in October 1924 oil industry executive Henry L. Doherty purchased Surface Combustion and merged it with his own natural gas industrial appliance company, Combustion Utilities Corp., under the name Henry L. Doherty & Co.[6] Doherty moved the company's headquarters to Toledo, Ohio, in 1928, where he believed the company would thrive due to a closer proximity to the Midwest's manufacturing centers and easy access to the large number of engineers being produced by the region's colleges and universities.
[9] By 1940, Janitrol had expanded into the aircraft and aerospace industries, providing small, self-contained petroleum- and gas-powered heating, de-icing, and other units.
[13] In the 1970s, Surface Combustion began developing furnaces for the destruction of chemical weapons under a contract awarded by Edgewood Arsenal.
[17] The sale did not include Surface Combustion's Janitrol Aero division, which Forstmann, Little retained as part of its FL Aerospace Corporation.