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American Machine and Foundry (U.S.)

AMF

Description

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United States of America

Description

"American Machine and Foundry, or AMF was founded in 1900 and was once one of the largest recreational equipment companies in the United States. In 1963 AMF tried to enter the monorail business by purchasing French company SAFEGE (an acronym for the French consortium Société Anonyme Française d' Etude de Gestion et d' Entreprises (in English, French Limited Company for the Study of Management and Business) (www.safege.com) design, construct, and market a monorail for American cities. The firm managed to build a demonstration line for the 1964/65 New York World's Fair. The original Safege concept was however abandoned and instead of the characteristic "concrete box girder" in which the Safege bogies ran an I-beam was used. This monorail gained a lot of attention at the World's Fair as one of the few real attractions there, but was subsequently not built anywhere else. While AMF never sold or built any Safege Monorails, this installation was responsible for many of today's enthusiasts first ride on monorail. By the late 1970s, the company had fallen on hard times. The absence of stable management (the company had seven presidents between 1972 and 1982), aging production facilities, rising labor costs, and the inability of AMF to efficiently operate and control its numerous corporate product divisions from its headquarters in White Plains, New York, contributed to a steady decline in sales and profits. In 1985 AMF was bought out by Minnesota based MINSTAR, Inc but continued to trade as AMF. In 2005, the company became known as QubicaAMF Worldwide (www.qubicaamf.com) when it partnered with Italian based Qubica Worldwide. The partnership takes advantage of Qubica's expertise in automatic scoring technology and AMF's technology in lane equipment and pinsetters. AMF's sole remaining asset is the AMF Bowling Corporation (www.amf.com), founded in 1936, and headquartered in Richmond, Virginia."
Sources:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Machine_and_Foundry
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAFEGE
www.alweg.com/alweghome/alwegcompetition.html
www.monorails.org/tmspages/history2.html

Esteban Rivera, 7 July 2010