Penny & Giles
The Penny &&; Giles product range includes a wide range of joysticks, sensors and solenoids for commercial vehicles and industrial equipment. These products are the legacy of the Penny && Giles company, which was founded in 1956 and acquired by Curtiss-Wright in 2002. Penny & Giles was established in 1956 by Professor William Penny and Sir James Giles when they identified a need in the aviation industry for instrumentation to provide high precision, high reliability wirewound potentiometer equipment to customers engaged in aircraft flight testing. Developments in 1957 led to the first aircraft accident data recorder (commonly known as the "black box") based on magnetic recording of data on stainless steel wire. In 1963, the British Ministry of Aviation notified that it was mandatory for passenger carrying civil aircraft to be equipped with accident data recording systems, and Penny &&; Giles was well placed to supply the sensors and recorders for these systems. Over the next few decades, Penny&&Giles developed technologies and products for markets as diverse as professional broadcasting and recording, motor controllers for electric wheelchairs, paperless chart recorders and trackballs for computer interfaces. The current product range includes: linear and rotary position sensors; LVDT and RVDT sensors; joysticks; studio faders; digital panel meters; and solenoid valve actuators for a wide range of industrial motion control applications. Products such as cockpit voice and flight data recorders; atmosphere data testers; pitot-static leak testers; and snow and ice detection systems are now available from Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions. Position sensors and solenoids for aerospace applications are now available from Curtiss-Wright Sensors & Controls.