Norbar Torque
Open-knowledge reference entry
Norbar Torque Tools Ltd specialises in the manufacture and worldwide distribution of torque tools for torque tightening, measurement and calibration. The primary office and factory location is in Banbury, United Kingdom and there are also Norbar sales, service and calibration facilities in Australia, United States, New Zealand, Singapore, China and India.
History
Norbar Torque Tools was owned and run by the descendants of the founder, William (Bill) Brodey until acquired by Snap-on Inc. in May 2017.
1940s
In 1942, at the height of World War II, Bill Brodey was engaged in selling various tools and machines including Joseph Sunnen honing machines used for honing cylinder bores of engines. Torque wrenches were being imported and sold alongside of the honing machines because it was known that uneven torque tightening of engine cylinder head bolts would distort the cylinder bore. Bill and his friend Ernest Thornitt applied to the UK Ministry of Supply requesting permission to manufacture torque wrenches in the UK. Torque wrenches were much in demand for the manufacture of Rolls-Royce Merlin aero engines and the UK Government was keen to manufacture in the UK wherever possible to reduce pressure on the Atlantic supply convoys. Consequently, permission was granted to 'The North Bar Tool Company' to start manufacturing torque wrenches in 'North Bar Place', Banbury in the United Kingdom. The address 'North Bar' gave the company its name and this was later contracted to 'Norbar'.
At the end of World War II the market for the Merlin aero engine dried up, along with all of the tools used in its manufacture.
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This entry incorporates text from “Norbar Torque” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.