The Whelen Engineering Company is an American corporation that designs and manufactures audio and visual warning equipment for automotive, aviation, and mass notification industries worldwide. Founded in a
Deep River, Connecticut
Deep River is a town in Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States. The town is part of the Lower Connecticut River Valley Planning Region. The population was 4,415 at the 2020 census. The town center is designated by the U.S. Census Bureau ...
garage in 1952,
Whelen has become a provider of warning lights, white illumination lighting, sirens, and controllers.
Whelen products are designed, manufactured, and assembled in two facilities in
Chester, Connecticut and
Charlestown, New Hampshire.
Divisions
The Whelen Company is divided into four divisions and has a subsidiary called Whelen Motorsports.
The four divisions of the company are as follows:
#The Automotive Division — provides lightbars, dashlights, strobe kits, siren boxes, and other public warning systems to be mounted on or within vehicles, rotating sirens, and student alert systems with voice broadcast capability.
#The Industrial Division — provides public alert hardware for clientele in an industrial plant forum.
#The Aviation Division — provides warning equipment specifically for use on aircraft or airport directional lighting.
#The Mass Notification Products Division — provides hardware for mass notification, such as omnidirectional sirens (
electronic civil defense sirens), rotating sirens, and student alert systems with voice broadcast capability.
An example product from the Mass Notification Products Division is the Whelen Hornet, which is an electronic
civil defense siren introduced in 1995. It contains a single 400-watt
speaker. The siren's appearance is best described as a small dish on a square rotator platform, with the single driver located at the center of the horn. It is the smallest outdoor siren made by Whelen. The siren can sound six signals, just like most other sirens produced by Whelen;
however, it is not voice-capable like the company's WPS-2900 and WPS-4000 series sirens. Whelen also produced the WPS-3000. The HSS Engineering, a Denmark company that import Whelen 2800s sirens to Denmark as the TWS-295 for civil defense warning/tsunami warning (Malaysia)/or missile (Israel).
Motorsports
Whelen Motorsports is partnered with
NASCAR
The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. It is considered to be one of the top ranked motorsports organizations in ...
and is the "Officially Licensed Warning Lights of NASCAR." It also sponsors and promotes two of NASCAR's regional touring series: the
NASCAR Whelen Euro Series, and the
NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour
The NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour (NWMT) (previously the NASCAR Winston Modified Tour and NASCAR Featherlite Modified Series from 1985 until 2005) is a modified stock car racing series owned and operated by NASCAR in the Modified Division. The Mod ...
(and formerly the
Whelen All-American Series, and the
NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour). In the Whelen All-American Series, more than 10,000 drivers compete for championship at 55 NASCAR-sanctioned short tracks within the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
and
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
.
Whelen Motorsports
/ref> Whelen the Modified and All-American tours . Whelen is also an official sponsor of Goulian Aerosports and airshow pilot Michael Goulian.
References
{{Reflist
Auto parts suppliers of the United States
Law enforcement equipment
Chester, Connecticut
Sirens
Aircraft external lights
Manufacturing companies established in 1952
1952 establishments in Connecticut
Privately held companies based in Connecticut