Westinghouse

Compagnie des Freins Westinghouse was established in France in 1915 as a subsidiary of US Westinghouse. It later became Compagnie des Freins et Signaux Westinghouse, adding electrical and electronic production to railway activities, including selenium rectifiers before the Second World War. This is the French Westinghouse story, distinct from America's Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing, Westinghouse Lamp Company and Canadian Westinghouse.

Addresses reflect different activities: in 1931 Compagnie des Freins was at 23 rue d'Athènes, Paris IX; in 1936 Oxymétal operated at Freinville-Sevran and Compagnie des Freins et Signaux appeared at 31 rue Lacordaire, Paris XV. The 1947 Paris address was 16 rue de Ville-l'Évêque, Paris VIII. Paris, Sevran and later Le Mans therefore do not represent one unchanged location.

After the war the French company became independent of the American parent. From 1946 it worked on state contracts and semiconductor rectifiers. Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker, German physicists experienced in radar and germanium, developed a point-contact amplifier in France. By June 1948 they achieved reproducible results with purer germanium; named Transistron, the device was also sold as WestCrel. Two closely spaced metal contacts act on the same piece of germanium: a solid-state device, not a thermionic valve despite a superficially similar package.

In 1949 Transistron production supplied amplifiers for the French telephone network. This links the company to early European point-contact transistor manufacturing; the French development was distinct from Bell Laboratories' work. Later junction transistors are a different technology. WestCrel, Westectal and Westcriphot identify products and families requiring individual identification, rather than treating them all as vacuum tubes or variants of one construction.

Compagnie des Dispositifs Semiconducteurs Westinghouse, CDSW, was formed in January 1967 as a US Westinghouse subsidiary. Its Le Mans plant took over Jeumont-Schneider's semiconductor department and Compagnie des Freins et Signaux Westinghouse's rectifier department. Jeumont-Schneider itself resulted from the 1964 combination of ACENE/FACEJ and Schneider Westinghouse activities at Champagne-sur-Seine. CDSW was therefore more than a renaming of the 1915 company: it combined activities of different origins in a new structure.