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This Month in History: Automated Controls Business Growing

January 30, 2024

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February 17, 1962: Company marks 50 years in Canada

Johnson Controls Ltd. was featured in an article entitled "Automated Control Growing Business" from the February 17, 1962 edition of The Financial Post of Toronto, Ontario. That year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Johnson wholly-owned subsidiary's operations in Canada. William L. Rootham, then vice president of Johnson Controls Ltd., noted the "keen competition" at that time between companies in the fast-developing automated control industry. As business and industry became ever more highly specialized and automated, he expected the demand for temperature control equipment and centralized control panels to be greater in the next ten years than it had been in the previous fifty.

"The control systems of the future will emphasize accuracy and longer life [which] will result in fewer service problems, greater reliability and more economical operation for the building owner."

As a result, Rootham saw "... the introduction of new and better control systems, especially for humidity control." He went on to state that "the control systems of the future will emphasize accuracy and longer life [which] will result in fewer service problems, greater reliability and more economical operation for the building owner." Rootham, who was later elected to the Board of Directors, became Johnson Controls' chief financial officer in the mid-1980s, and retired as vice chairman in 1987.

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