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dixonvalve.com100 Years of Uncommon Excellence
™
In 1887, with an eighth-grade education, 15-year-old
H.W. Goodall quit school to take a job as a general clerk
and errand boy for Philadelphia rubber distributor, Latta
& Mulconroy Company. As the son of a cabinetmaker,
he loved to tinker and was soon designing hose
couplings and clamps
as accessories to Latta
& Mulconroy’s hose
line. With Mulconroy's
blessing, H.W.
promoted the new
couplings to a few
accounts. When
Goodall requested
permission to
expand Mulconroy's
business model and
introduce his products to the region’s leather tanning
industry, Latta refused—and fired the ambitious young
man.
Goodall saw the setback as an opportunity. He went
on to found the Goodall Rubber Company and the Knox
Manufacturing Company to manufacture and sell hose
and couplings. He was more than an astute inventor
and engineer—he was a gifted salesman who
recognized the importance of asking industry leaders
what products they needed to do their jobs better. In an
age before airplanes made travel easy, he crisscrossed
the country, visiting every major construction site he
could locate, identifying its hose and coupling needs,
and then manufacturing the necessary products.
On March 21, 1916, armed with firsthand knowledge
of the needs of the United States' growing mining, oil
drilling, construction and railroad industries, H.W.
Goodall founded Dixon Valve & Coupling Co. in
Philadelphia, PA. Eight years later, urged to slow down
for health reasons, he sold the Goodall Rubber Co.—he
previously had sold the Knox Co.—to concentrate
exclusively on Dixon.
As the company grew, it moved several times to
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larger locations, eventually settling in 1929 at Hancock
and Columbia Avenues in Philadelphia. That year, and
for the next 15 years, the largest selling item in the
Dixon line was rotary hose couplings, a high-pressure
fitting used in oil drilling. Early items in the product line,
which remain Dixon products today, were Boss
™
couplings, King
™
single and double bolt hose clamps, air
hammer couplings, suction couplings, Air King
™
universal couplings and King
™
combination nipples.
Prior to World War II, Dixon promoted and sold these
basic products while continually adding new hose fittings
and accessories. The products listed below are a few
Dixon firsts:
• Ground Joint Boss
™
and air hammer couplings
• Air King
™
malleable iron universal coupling with
safety locking features
• Steel King
™
combination nipples
• Plated hose fittings
• Dredge sleeve clamps
• Steel hose menders
• Boss-lock
™
cam and groove
On October 12, 1934, Dixon opened its first
international distribution center, in Canada (Dixon Group
Canada Ltd.) This successful investment has since
expanded to four locations throughout Canada.
In 1940, some half a century after he had launched
his career at Latta & Mulconroy Co., H.W. Goodall led
Dixon's purchase of the company (at that point known
as the Mulconroy Co.) and
incorporated its products into the
Dixon line as Holedall
™
couplings.
With brisk sales and
ongoing innovation, the
future looked bright for Dixon.
But the advent of World
War II, which transformed the
business landscape across the country, threw a wrench
in the wheel of the company's expansion.
Many Dixon products fell under the federal
government priority system and were used by industry
and the military in the war effort. Before long, Dixon
manufacturing facilities were used almost entirely for
military contracts. The largest was to produce 380,000
fuse plugs for anti-aircraft shells, which were run on a
brand new six-spindle automatic screw machine, the
only one in the Philadelphia area at the time. Since
Dixon was forced to adhere to the government’s wartime
H.W. Goodall, founder