Britisch Oxygen Company

The BOC Group

Type	subsidiary
Industry	Industrial gas
Founded	1886
Headquarters	Guildford, Surrey, England, UK
Number of employees	30,000
Parent	The Linde Group
Website	www.boconline.co.uk/en/index.html

The BOC Group plc was the official name of the multinational industrial gas and British based company more commonly known as BOC, and now a part of the Linde Group. In September 2004, BOC had over 30,000 employees on six continents, with sales of over £10.6 billion. BOC was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and the FT 30. On 5 September 2006 the BOC Group became part of the Linde Group of Germany and is no longer traded as a separate company.

Brin's Oxygen Company, Ltd. was formed in 1886, by two French brothers, Arthur and Leon Brin. In the early years, the company manufactured oxygen using a high temperature barium oxide process, known as the Brin process, developed from the work of French scientist Jean Baptiste Boussingault. The main application for gaseous oxygen at that time was in connection with generation of limelight, used in magic lanterns and theatre lighting.

A major new market emerged around 1903, with the development of the oxyacetylene welding process. Around the same time, new cryogenic air separation processes had been devised independently in Britain, the United States and Germany. The German engineer and founder of the Linde Group, Carl von Linde, won the patent for the process. The Brin brothers negotiated an agreement to use the Linde patents. In exchange, Carl von Linde was given a stake and a board position in Brin's Oxygen Company, which he held until 1914. The new process replaced the inefficient barium oxide process, paving the way for larger scale and more efficient production.