Water Heater History

AO Smith History

A. O. Smith did not start as a water heater company. It became one of the most important firms in the industry by solving a materials problem that had kept storage tanks expensive, short-lived, and hard to manufacture at scale.

AO-Smith-engineers-fusing-glass-to-steel-photo

A. O. Smith engineers fusing glass to steel — the materials process that later made mass-produced storage water heaters practical.

A. O. Smith History: From Milwaukee Machine Shop to Water Technology Giant

A. O. Smith Corporation is one of the central companies in the history of the modern water heater. Its lasting contribution was not the invention of automatic storage heating — that work belongs to earlier figures such as Edwin Ruud — but the industrial application of glass-fused-to-steel tank construction. That materials breakthrough, commercialized in the late 1930s and scaled after World War II, made durable storage water heaters cheap enough for ordinary houses.

The company’s path was not linear. For most of its first sixty years, it was a metalworking and automotive supplier. Water heating began as a side application of a glass-lining process developed for brewery tanks. Over the following decades, A. O. Smith entered the commercial heating market, acquired major competitors, left automobiles and electric motors behind, and rebuilt itself as a focused water technology company selling heaters, boilers, and water treatment equipment worldwide.

This article traces that history with emphasis on the water heater business: origins, the glass-lining revolution, wartime interruption, postwar mass production, commercial expansion, late-century consolidation, and the twenty-first-century turn toward high-efficiency heating and water treatment.

Origins: C. J. Smith and the Milwaukee Shop (1874–1904)

Charles Jeremiah Smith, an English-born metalworker, opened a one-man machine shop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1874. The first products were hardware specialties and metal parts for baby carriages. Sons later joined the firm, which became C. J. Smith and Sons.

The shop’s first industry-scale success was bicycles. In 1889, the company began forming steel tubing from sheet metal. By 1895, it was the largest bicycle-parts manufacturer in the United States and, by some accounts, the world.

The next leap was automotive. In 1899, Arthur Oliver Smith, a son of the founder, developed a pressed-steel automobile frame that was lighter and cheaper than the structural-steel frames then in use. Early customers included Peerless, Cadillac, Packard, and Oldsmobile. Arthur incorporated the business as A. O. Smith Company in Milwaukee in 1904, the year his father died.

Automotive Powerhouse and Materials Laboratory (1906–1933)

Henry Ford’s 1906 order for 10,000 steel frames forced the company to invent a mass-production method for frame assembly. Within four years, A. O. Smith was North America’s largest frame maker. Under Lloyd Raymond “Ray” Smith, the firm unveiled the “Mechanical Marvel” in 1921: the world’s first fully automated automobile frame plant, capable of producing a frame every eight seconds, or about 10,000 frames a day. The plant ran until 1958. Over nearly a century in automotive work, the company produced more than 100 million passenger-car frames and 50 million truck frames.

Arthur O. Smith and L. R. Smith were later inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.

The same engineering culture produced other industrial firsts: a coated welding rod in 1918 that helped make arc welding a mass-production method; the first arc-welded high-pressure vessel for oil refining (1925); and economical large-diameter welded line pipe (1927), which supported the growth of transcontinental oil and natural-gas pipelines.

Those vessel and welding skills matter to water heater history because they created the laboratory in which glass-to-steel fusion was perfected.

Glass-Lined Steel: From Brewery Tanks to Water Heaters (1933–1939)

Repeal of Prohibition in 1933 revived large-scale brewing. Brewers needed bigger storage vessels that would not corrode or taint beer. A. O. Smith applied earlier research in fusing glass (vitreous enamel) to steel and introduced a large, single-piece glass-lined brewery tank. Over the next 32 years, the company made more than 11,000 of them.

Company histories date the water heater application to 1936, when A. O. Smith patented a process for glass-lining a water heater tank. The claim is consistent across official timelines.

Subsequent U.S. patents assigned to the company show how that process was turned into a manufacturable domestic tank:

Orrin E. Andrus, Hot water tank and connection, U.S. Patent 2,179,476 (filed 1938, granted 1939)
Otto E. Uecker, Domestic hot water tank, U.S. Patent 2,263,021 (filed 1938, granted 1941)
Otto E. Uecker, Glass-lined hot water tank, U.S. Patent 2,322,488 (filed 1940, granted 1943)

Those later patents describe the practical construction problem: how to enamel tank sections, assemble them, and keep the lining intact at welds, flues, and fittings. Combined with sacrificial anode protection developed in the same period (Andrus U.S. Patent 2,267,361), glass-lined steel plus a magnesium anode became the standard residential tank architecture of the postwar era.

Before glass lining, many better tanks were copper, Monel, or Everdur. Those metals resisted corrosion but were expensive. Ordinary steel tanks rusted. Glass lining let manufacturers to use cheap steel while still offering a reasonably long service life. That combination, more than any single burner or thermostat improvement, made the storage water heater a mass-market appliance.

A. O. Smith began producing residential glass-lined water heaters in 1939. Production was almost immediately interrupted by World War II.

War Work and the Postwar Factory (1941–1954)

Like many U.S. metalworking firms, A. O. Smith converted to war production. By 1945, it had built about 4.5 million bombs, 16,750 sets of landing gear, and 46,700 propeller blades, along with B-25 nose frames, jeep frames, military water heaters, and components for the atomic bomb project. It ranked among the larger wartime contractors.

Civilian demand returned with the housing boom. In 1946–47, the company built a 400,000-square-foot residential water heater plant in Kankakee, Illinois. Early output included private-label Kenmore heaters for Sears. Volume at the plant doubled twice before 1950; by the mid-1950s, monthly production approached 50,000 units, or more than 3,000 heaters a day.

Commercial heating followed. In 1948, A. O. Smith acquired the Burkay Company of Toledo, Ohio, a maker of coil-type “instantaneous” commercial heaters. That acquisition is the origin of the company’s commercial line. In 1953–54, the water heater division introduced the first glass-lined commercial unit, the A. O. Smith Burkay B-65. Glass-lined commercial tanks remain an industry standard. A version of that lineage is still associated with the company’s South Carolina plant.

The same glass-to-steel technology produced the Harvestore silo in 1949, a glass-fused-to-steel farm structure. More than 70,000 Harvestore units were installed over the following decades — a reminder that water heater tanks were just one product in a broader glass-coated-vessel business. In 1953, the acquisition of Glascote Products made A. O. Smith the world’s largest manufacturer of glass-coated steel products.

Company accounts note that the original glass-lining patent protection expired around 1955. Competition widened, and A. O. Smith reduced some private-label residential work while keeping a strong position in commercial equipment.

Diversification, Conservationist Heaters, and Global Reach (1961–1997)

The water heater business expanded abroad while the parent company remained a conglomerate.

1961: first water heater plant outside the United States, at Stratford, Ontario.

1969: area: 10 million residential water heaters.

1972: first European water heater operation, at Veldhoven, the Netherlands.

1974: 100th anniversary of the Smith shop, and introduction of the Conservationist line of more efficient residential heaters.

1978: Aquastore glass-fused-to-steel industrial storage tanks.

Motors, fiberglass pipe, automotive frames, and farm structures still mattered. The automotive unit produced its 100 millionth passenger-car frame in 1982. In 1997, after roughly 90 to 98 years in the auto business, A. O. Smith sold Automotive Products to Tower Automotive. That sale was a turning point: the company would spend the next decade concentrating on water heaters and motors, then on water alone.

China's entry began in 1995 with joint ventures, including residential water heaters. In 1998, Water Products bought out its Chinese partner and opened a Nanjing plant — the start of a business that later became one of the company’s largest international operations.

Product development in this period included the 1996 Cyclone commercial line, which used a slush-coated glassing process and high thermal efficiency. Cyclone became A. O. Smith’s flagship commercial family and later expanded into modulating and large-volume models (Cyclone MXi, LV, XL).

Consolidation: State, GSW, and North American Leadership (2001–2010)

Two acquisitions remade the North American water heater industry.

In 2001, A. O. Smith bought State Industries and its component subsidiary APCOM.

State, founded in Nashville in 1946 by Herbert Lindahl Sr., had become one of the largest independent manufacturers and an important innovator in foam insulation and commercial self-cleaning designs (Sandblaster). The deal nearly doubled A. O. Smith’s water heater business and returned the company to the retail channel after more than forty years. The State brand was kept. APCOM added heating elements, thermostats, and drain valves.

In 2006, the company completed what it then called its largest acquisition:

Canadian manufacturer GSW Inc. and American Water Heater Company. The deal added the American, Whirlpool, GSW, and John Wood brands, making A. O. Smith the leading water heater manufacturer in North America.

Other product steps in the same decade:

2004: patented Blue Diamond glass coating on Conservationist residential heaters, claimed to more than double corrosion resistance versus standard lining.

2007: Vertex high-efficiency residential heater.

2008: entry into the Indian water heater market.

2009: water purification venture in Shanghai.

2010: Bangalore residential plant; joint venture acquiring Takagi’s North American tankless operations; launch of hybrid heat-pump, high-efficiency gas, and solar water heating products.

The Water Technology Company (2011–present)

In 2011, A. O. Smith sold its electric motor business to Regal Beloit and bought Lochinvar, a Lebanon, Tennessee maker of high-efficiency condensing boilers and water heaters. Those two transactions completed the shift from industrial conglomerate to water technology specialist. Harvard Business Review later listed the transformation among the notable corporate pivots of the decade.

Water treatment was built by acquisition and new brands:

Aquasana (2016), consumer filtration and reverse osmosis.

Hague Quality Water (2017), Water-Right (2018–19), Master Water Conditioning (2021), and later regional dealers such as Atlantic Filter, Water Tec of Tucson, and Impact Water Products.

Giant Factories (2021), a Quebec water heater maker.

Pureit, acquired from Hindustan Unilever in 2024, is expanding treatment in India.

Leonard Valve (January 2026), adding water-management and mixing-valve technology.

On the heating side, the company continued to extend Cyclone, ProLine commercial-grade residential tanks, Voltex heat-pump heaters, and tankless products with X3 scale-prevention technology (2022), which it paired with a 15-year limited warranty covering scale-related failures on qualifying condensing tankless units. In 2018, it opened the L. R. Smith Corporate Technology Center in Milwaukee for research in potable and hydronic heating, water treatment, and air purification.

The firm marked its 150th anniversary in 2024. Leadership passed from Kevin J. Wheeler, CEO from 2018, to Stephen M. Shafer, who became president and CEO in July 2025 and chairman in July 2026. Headquarters remain in Milwaukee; the historic center of U.S. water heater manufacturing associated with the company is Ashland City, Tennessee, the former State plant often described as the world’s largest water heater factory.

Recent financial scale: about $3.8 billion in 2024 sales and roughly 12,000–13,000 employees, with major operations in North America, China, India, and Europe.

Why A. O. Smith Matters in Water Heater History

Three contributions stand out.

Materials. Glass-lined steel, commercialized by A. O. Smith from brewery-tank practice, is the reason most residential storage heaters in North America are steel tanks rather than copper or alloy vessels. The lining-plus-anode system set the cost and durability template that competitors adopted after the early patents expired.

Scale. The Kankakee plant and later high-volume factories, including private-label production for Sears Kenmore, helped turn the water heater from a specialty item into standard housing equipment during the postwar building boom.

Industry structure. The State (2001) and GSW/American (2006) acquisitions, followed by Lochinvar (2011) and Giant (2021), consolidated historic American and Canadian brands under a single manufacturer. A. O. Smith today sells not only under its own name but through State, American, Reliance, GSW, John Wood, Lochinvar, Takagi, and related labels. That consolidation is as important to the modern industry as any single product design.

The company did not invent the automatic storage water heater. It made the tank that allowed the heater to be produced by the millions.

A. O. Smith Timeline

1874 — Charles Jeremiah Smith opens Charles J. Smith-Machinist in Milwaukee; later C. J. Smith and Sons. Baby-carriage parts and hardware.

1889–1895 — Enters bicycle parts by forming steel tubing from sheet metal; becomes the largest U.S. bicycle-parts maker.

1899 — Arthur O. Smith develops the first pressed-steel automobile frame.

1904 — Business incorporated as A. O. Smith Company in Milwaukee.

1906 — Henry Ford orders 10,000 frames; the company develops mass-production frame assembly and soon leads North American frame manufacturing.

1918 — Coated welding rod developed for wartime production; influences arc welding as a factory method.

1921 — “Mechanical Marvel” automated frame plant opens under L. R. Smith.

1925–1927 — Arc-welded high-pressure oil-refining vessels; economical large-diameter welded line pipe.

1933 — First large single-piece glass-lined brewery tank. More than 11,000 tanks have been built over 32 years.

1936 — The company dates its patent for glass-lining a water heater tank to this year. The process becomes the industry’s corrosion-protection standard for steel storage tanks.

1939 — First residential glass-lined water heaters produced.

1938–1943 — Key assigned patents on enamel-lined domestic tank construction and connections (Andrus 2,179,476; Uecker 2,263,021 and 2,322,488), plus related cathodic-protection work.

1942–1945 — World War II production: bombs, landing gear, propellers, bomber frames, jeep frames, military water heaters. About 4.5 million bombs by 1945. Civilian heater production stops.

1946–1947 — Kankakee, Illinois, residential plant built. Early postwar heaters include Sears Kenmore private-label units. Output rises to roughly 50,000 units a month by the mid-1950s.

1948 — Acquires Burkay Company of Toledo; enters commercial / coil-type instantaneous water heating.

1949 — Harvestore glass-fused-to-steel farm silo introduced.

1953–1954 — First glass-lined commercial water heater shipped (Burkay B-65). Glascote acquisition makes the firm the world’s largest glass-coated steel products maker.

1955 — Original glass-lining patent protection expires; residential competition increases.

1961 — First water heater plant outside the United States, Stratford, Ontario.

1968–1969 — 10 millionth residential water heater.

1972 — European water heater operation opens in Veldhoven, the Netherlands.

1974 — 100th anniversary. Conservationist residential line introduced.

1978 — Aquastore glass-fused-to-steel storage tanks.

1979 / 1984 — State Industries (later an A. O. Smith brand) introduces self-cleaning Sandblaster commercial heaters, then a residential self-cleaning design.

1982 — 100 millionth passenger-car frame.

1988 — A. O. Smith and L. R. Smith were inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.

1995 — China market entry via joint ventures, including residential water heaters.

1996–1997 — Cyclone / Cyclone HE high-efficiency commercial glass-lined heaters. The automotive business was sold to Tower Automotive.

1998 — Nanjing water heater plant after the buyout of China's joint-venture partner.

2001 — Acquires State Industries and APCOM; nearly doubles the water heater business and re-enters retail.

2004 — Blue Diamond glass coating on Conservationist residential heaters.

2006 — Acquires GSW and American Water Heater Company; adds American, Whirlpool, GSW, and John Wood brands; becomes North American volume leader.

2007 — Vertex high-efficiency residential heater.

2008–2010 — India market entry; Shanghai water-treatment venture; Bangalore plant; Takagi North America tankless joint venture; heat-pump, high-efficiency gas, and solar products.

2011 — Sells electric motor business to Regal Beloit. Acquires Lochinvar (high-efficiency boilers and water heaters). Pivot to a pure water technology company.

2014–2017 — Cyclone MXi modulating commercial heaters; ProLine commercial-grade residential family.

2016 — Acquires Aquasana, a major step into North American water treatment.

2018 — L. R. Smith Corporate Technology Center opens in Milwaukee.

2021 — Acquires Giant Factories (Canada) and additional water-treatment firms.

2022 — X3 scale-prevention technology on condensing tankless products.

2024 — 150th anniversary. Acquires Pureit water-purification business from Hindustan Unilever. About $3.8 billion in annual sales.

2025–2026 — Stephen M. Shafer becomes president and CEO (July 2025) and chairman (July 2026). Leonard Valve acquired (January 2026).

Note on Sources and Dates

A. O. Smith’s official timelines, Wikipedia, contemporary trade coverage, and assigned U.S. patents agree on the main sequence: 1874 shop, 1904 incorporation, 1933 brewery tanks, 1936 company-claimed water-heater lining patent, 1939 residential production, wartime halt, 1946–47 Kankakee scale-up, 1948 Burkay, 1953–54 first glass-lined commercial tank. Where company marketing language (“the first glass-lined water heater”) meets the patent record, the safer historical statement is that A. O. Smith industrialized glass-fused-to-steel tanks for residential and then commercial water heaters and made that construction the North American standard. Earlier enamel-lined iron vessels appear in the nineteenth-century patent record; they did not result in a mass-market storage heater. The Uecker and Andrus patents of 1938–1943 are the detailed construction documents behind the tanks that did.