Crompton Company Illustrations by Tracey Sugarman

Crompton & Knowles Corporation is a medium-sized company whose business is divided into three highly specialized areas: dyemaking, the manufacture and marketing of extrusion equipment and components (for processing of plastics), and the production of flavors, food colorings, and fragrances for the food processing and pharmaceutical industries. Crompton & Knowles is one of the largest dye producers in America for the textile and related industries and the sole supplier of 40 percent of the dyes it makes. Crompton & Knowles's roots lie in the cotton weaving industry, one of the first enterprises to be mechanized in western Europe in the late eighteenth century. William Crompton was a New England businessman who originated an improved loom, which he began manufacturing and marketing in the town of Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1837. For the next four decades, the Crompton Loom Works was practically without competitors, and it steadily prospered. Toward the end of this exclusive reign, Lucius J. Knowles, another New England businessman, developed an improved version of the textile loom in 1862, whereupon he too established his own company, L. J. Knowles & Bros., in the town of Warren, Massachusetts.