Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques

The Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques (SACM) [Alsatian corporation of mechanical engineering] is an engineering company with its headquarters in Mulhouse, Alsace which produced railway locomotives, textile and printing machinery, diesel engines, boilers, lifting equipment, firearms and mining equipment. SACM also produced the first atomic reactor at Marcoule.

The company was founded by André Koechlin in 1826 to produce textile machinery. In 1839, he opened a factory to build railway locomotives at Mulhouse in Alsace. The business grew rapidly but in 1871, the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany, brought about the transfer of some production to Belfort in France. In 1872 the company merged with the Graffenstaden company of Illkirch-Graffenstaden (a suburb of Strasbourg) to form SACM.

The new company diversified into the production of boilers, steel equipment, printing equipment, compressors, firearms and other engineering products growing to 4500 employees by 1910. A new foundry was built in 1922 for textile machinery. In 1928 the Thomson-Houston Electric Company merged with the Electrical Engineering division of SACM to form a new company named Alsthom, (Alsace-Thomson), later changed to Alstom.

In 1940, Alsace and Lorraine were again annexed/occupied to the German Reich, the production of locomotives for Germany began. After the war, the remaining divisions of SACM continued operating independently until 1966 when the company became a subsidiary of the Company's Hispano-Alsatian machine-building (SHACM) and Alsatian Society of Industrial Investments (ALSPI). In 1970 a new company Alcatel was created by merging The Industrial Telephone Company (a subsidiary of the General Electricity Company), with the Nuclear energy telecommunications and electronic Department of SACM.

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