Wah Chang Corporation was an American manufacturing company in the metal or alloy industry based in

Albany, Oregon Albany ( ) is the county seat of Linn County, Oregon, and is the 11th most populous city in the state. Albany is located in the Willamette Valley at the confluence of the Calapooia River and the Willamette River in both Linn and Benton count ...

in the United States. Since 2014, it has been a business unit of

Allegheny Technologies ATI Inc. (previously Allegheny Technologies Incorporated) is an American producer of specialty materials headquartered in Dallas, Texas. ATI produces metals including titanium and titanium alloys, nickel-based alloys and superalloys, stainles ...

and makes corrosion-resistant metals, such as

hafnium Hafnium is a chemical element; it has symbol Hf and atomic number 72. A lustrous, silvery gray, tetravalent transition metal, hafnium chemically resembles zirconium and is found in many zirconium minerals. Its existence was predicted by Dm ...

niobium Niobium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Nb (formerly columbium, Cb) and atomic number 41. It is a light grey, crystalline, and Ductility, ductile transition metal. Pure niobium has a Mohs scale of mineral hardness, Mohs h ...

titanium Titanium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in ...

vanadium Vanadium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol V and atomic number 23. It is a hard, silvery-grey, malleable transition metal. The elemental metal is rarely found in nature, but once isolated artificially, the formation of an ...

, and

zirconium Zirconium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Zr and atomic number 40. First identified in 1789, isolated in impure form in 1824, and manufactured at scale by 1925, pure zirconium is a lustrous transition metal with a greyis ...

History

In 1916 (some sources say 1914),

Chinese American Chinese Americans are Americans of Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans have ancestors from mainland China, Hong Kong ...

mining engineer Kuo-Ching "KC" Li Sr. founded the company in

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

state, under the name Wah Chang Trading Corporation. ''Wah Chang'' is

Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...

for "fortunate enterprise" or "great development". This expanded as an international

tungsten Tungsten (also called wolfram) is a chemical element; it has symbol W and atomic number 74. It is a metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively in compounds with other elements. It was identified as a distinct element in 1781 and first ...

ore and concentrate trading company. In 1946, the company built a plant in

Union City, New Jersey Union City is a City (New Jersey), city in the North Hudson, New Jersey, northern part of Hudson County, New Jersey, Hudson County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the city was List of municipalities in Ne ...

. In the 1950s, it was also operating tungsten mines in Calento, Nevada, and near

Bishop, California Bishop (formerly Bishop Creek) is the only incorporated city in Inyo County, California, United States. It is located near the northern end of the Owens Valley within the Mojave Desert, at an elevation of . The city was named after Bishop Creek ...

. In 1953, Stephen W. H. Yih, who had master's degrees in Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, was hired by Wah Chang Trading Corporation in New York to head up the Titanium Project. In 1955, Kuo-Ching Li Sr., Founder of the Wah Chang Trading Corporation, New York, sent his top engineer, Stephen W. H. Yih to the

US Bureau of Mines The United States Bureau of Mines (USBM) was the primary Federal government of the United States, United States government agency in the 20th century that conducted scientific research and disseminated information on the extraction, processing ...

Titanium Development Plant in Boulder City NV to learn how to make the metal. This is where he met Wing Muin Mark, who was directing operations at the Titanium Development Plant. Within one year, Mark and Yih collaborated to produce the highest purity titanium in the world. In 1956, the Energy Commission (AEC) contracted with Wah Chang to operate the

U.S. Bureau of Mines The United States Bureau of Mines (USBM) was the primary United States government agency in the 20th century that conducted scientific research and disseminated information on the extraction, processing, use, and conservation of mineral resour ...

zirconium plant in

, to develop high-purity

for use in the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

's nuclear program. After Wah Chang was granted an additional two-year contract, it decided to build its own zirconium production facility. In May 1956, the Albany, Oregon-based Wah Chang Corporation hired Wing Muin Mark, as its second employee behind Yih. Mark was tasked with designing the plant and production equipment and supervising operations for the new Zirconium plant. Wah Chang began construction of its new plant in August. And on Christmas Day 1956, just four months later, the first commercially produced batch of Zirconium sponge was pulled from the reduction furnaces at the new production facility. Mark later developed the processes for making high-purity Hafnium and Titanium. Li remained with the company until his death in 1961, serving as president until 1960 and then board chairman.

Teledyne years (1967–1996)

Wah Chang was privately owned by K.C. Li until 1967, when it was acquired by

Teledyne Teledyne Technologies Incorporated is an American industrial conglomerate. It was founded in 1960, as Teledyne, Inc. by Henry Singleton and George Kozmetsky. From August 1996 to November 1999, Teledyne existed as part of the conglomerate Al ...

, the main Albany plant (located in the then-unincorporated area known as Millersburg) becoming a

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company (law), company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidia ...

named Teledyne Wah Chang Albany, or TWCA. In 1966, Wah Chang had around 1,200 employees, in plants in Albany, Oregon;

Glen Cove, New York Glen Cove is a Political subdivisions of New York State#City, city in Nassau County, New York, Nassau County, on the North Shore (Long Island), North Shore of Long Island, New York (state), New York, United States. The city's population was 28,3 ...

;

Huntsville, Alabama Huntsville is the List of municipalities in Alabama, most populous city in the U.S. state of Alabama. The population of the city is estimated to be 241,114 in 2024, making it the List of United States cities by population, 100th-most populous ...

; and

Texas City, Texas Texas City is a city in Galveston County, Texas, United States, on the southwest shoreline of Galveston Bay. Texas City is a deepwater port on Texas's Gulf Coast, as well as a petroleum-refining and petrochemical-manufacturing center. The popu ...

, and sales of $40.7 million. The Albany plant was by far the largest, and at the time of its sale to Teledyne, it accounted for around $20 million in annual revenue, with 860 employees at that location. The Alabama factory became a separate subsidiary named Teledyne Wah Chang Huntsville. In the early 1970s, Wing Mark proposed the idea of making high-purity Hafnium Crystal Bar to Teledyne Wah Chang Albany. He went on to design the production plant, equipment, and process which produced a 99.99999% Hafnium purity, earning him the nickname, “Mr. Hafnium.” In 1975, TWCA had 1,400 employees, and had $100 million in annual sales. In 1979, Mark Siddall developed a method for the isotope separation of Zirconium as . After separation the desired isotopes are converted to the metal by the van Arkel-de Boer process. In 1982, it entered a joint venture with

Mitsui is a Japanese corporate group and '' keiretsu'' that traces its roots to the ''zaibatsu'' groups that were dissolved after World War II. Unlike the ''zaibatsu'' of the pre-war period, there is no controlling company with regulatory power. Ins ...

and Ishizuka Research to form Zirconium Industry Corp. Zirconium sponge was produced by this venture in Japan to refine the zirconium sand at a new plant from 1983. The Millersburg plant was listed as a

Superfund Superfund is a United States federal environmental remediation program established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The program is administered by the United States Environmental Pro ...

site in 1983, requiring environmental clean-up, which the company carried out over the following several years. Its

plant on the

North Shore of Long Island The North Shore of Long Island is the area along the northern coast of New York's Long Island bordering Long Island Sound. Known for its extreme wealth and lavish estates, the North Shore exploded into affluence at the turn of the 20th century, ...

became an EPA Superfund site sometime after 1989. In the 1990s, the company was victimized by the

peace dividend ''Peace dividend'' was a political slogan popularized by US President George H. W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the light of the 1988–1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, that described the economic benefit of a decrease in ...

after the end of the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

, although it still generated research output like and .

Allegheny Technologies subsidiary (1996–present)

After TWCA merged with Allegheny Ludlum Corporation in 1996, to become Allegheny Technologies Incorporated, the company became ATI Wah Chang.

Wah Chang people

* Kuo-Ching "KC" Li Sr. - Founder, President, and Chairman of Wah Chang Corporation. *Wing Muin Mark (a.k.a. "Mr. Hafnium") - Chief Engineer/Architect/Operations Manager at Wah Chang Corporation and Teledyne Wah Chang Albany, who developed the processes for producing high-purity Hafnium (99.99999%), Zirconium, and Titanium. Mark received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemistry and a Minor in Metallurgy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1949. * Stephen W. H. Yih - Engineer and President (after Kuo-Ching Li Sr.) of Teledyne Wah Chang Albany in Albany. Yih served as president for 20 years. *Edmund F. Baroch - Vice President of Teledyne Wah Chang in Albany, Oregon

Merger and acquisition

* 1916 Kuo-Ching Li founded Wah Chang Trading Corporation in New York state. * 1967 Acquired by

and became Teledyne Wah Chang Albany (TWCA) located in Albany, Oregon. It became a subsidiary of

. * Wah Chang's Alabama plant became Teledyne Wah Chang Huntsville, a subsidiary of

. * 1996

acquired by Allegheny Ludlum Corporation, which created parent company named Allegheny Technologies Incorporated (ATI). Teledyne Wah Chang became ATI Wah Chang. * 2014 ATI Wah Chang renamed ATI Specialty Alloys and Components, a business unit of

ATI Ati or ATI may refer to: * Ati people, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines **Ati language (Philippines), the language spoken by this people group ** Ati-Atihan festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines * Ati language (China), ...

ATI

In March 2014, it was renamed ATI Specialty Alloys and Components.

References

{{Teledyne Manufacturing companies based in Oregon Companies based in Albany, Oregon Manufacturing companies established in 1916 1916 establishments in New York (state) Metal companies of the United States 1967 mergers and acquisitions 2014 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1916 Teledyne Technologies Titanium companies