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Corporate History

Graham Corporation - originally incorporated as Graham Manufacturing Co., Inc. in New York State in 1936 under the leadership of Harold Graham. The company, as it exists today, was founded by Harold M. Graham and Frederick D. Berkeley in 1941. Engineers with great imagination and talent, they brought years of experience and knowledge with them from Ross Heater Manufacturing Company, where they were both employed.


Harold M. Graham	Frederick D. Berkeley	Frederick D. Berkeley III

The company began by designing steam ejector equipment and surface condensers, with Berkeley joining shortly thereafter. After settling into the manufacturing business, the company began producing heaters in a plant in Oswego, New York, many of which were for the U.S. government. Soon afterwards, facilities were purchased in Batavia, New York, with production beginning in 1942. It is here where it continues today.

During the war years, the company's efforts were nearly entirely in the area of producing surface condensers and heat exchangers for shipboard applications. The company earned Maritime M and Victory Fleet awards from the U.S. Maritime Commission for outstanding production achievement for World War II.

Graham Surface Condensers
for a shipboard application

After the war, great efforts were made to establish the company in the commercial market. The principal products of the company were broadened to include all types of shell and tube heat exchangers, evaporators for power plant use, deaerating feedwater heaters, surface condensers, barometric condensers, steam vacuum refrigeration systems, steam jet ejectors, vertical marine evaporators, and Heliflow^® heat exchangers.

Today, Graham no longer manufactures evaporators and deaerating heaters for power plants but we have expanded our product line to include liquid ring vacuum pumps, plate and frame heat exchangers, clean steam generators, and the MicroMix^®II water heater.

The Heliflow heat exchanger design was an invention of Harold Graham, built during the war years for boiler sample cooling. This heat exchanger is still manufactured today, where it is used in a variety of applications. Many models can be shipped directly from stock.

The Batavia manufacturing facilities have been consistently expanding since those early years, and now include modern engineering, manufacturing, and research and development facilities.

The company went public in 1968 and today is traded on the American Stock Exchange under symbol GHM.

With the death of Harold Graham in 1956, Frederick D. Berkeley assumed responsibility for the company. Frederick D. Berkeley III took over in 1962 when his father passed away. In 1998, after 36 years successfully leading the company, Frederick Berkeley III passed away and Alvaro Cadena was at the helm until December of 2004. Today Jerald Bidlack is the Chairman of the Board, with James Lines as President.

In 1983, Graham established a holding company, Graham Corporation, to oversee responsibility for Graham subsidiaries. With the changing times, more recently it became apparent that this holding company had served its purpose and was no longer necessary. Effective January 1, 1999, Graham Manufacturing Co., Inc. and the parent company, Graham Corporation, merged, the resulting company being Graham Corporation.

Designing and manufacturing heat transfer equipment and vacuum systems for industrial applications and for the food and beverage industries continue to be the primary functions of Graham Corporation. Very few of our products are sold without detailed engineering analysis of the application and special drawings of the equipment required. By placing emphasis on quality workmanship and engineering know-how, we have earned a reputation that is outstanding in the field of heat transfer and vacuum equipment.

The primary markets for Graham equipment are the chemical and petroleum industries. Graham equipment can be found in major chemical plants, oil refineries, electric power generating industries, pulp and paper companies, as well as the shipbuilding industry, to name a few. While our products are highly specialized, the applications for these products are extremely broad and varied.

Graham recognizes the importance of engineering answers to users of our equipment. We are constantly striving to improve the manufacturing capabilities and engineeering resources of our company to add value to and improve the efficiency of your customer's process.

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