NOHAB anvils and info

[luke978]

There is almost no info on NOHAB anvils. Hopefully more NOHAB anvil owners will post info here.

Info on the company:

Swedish NOHAB company began in 1847, as Trollhättans Mekaniska Verkstad was founded by Antenor Nydqvist, Johan Magnus Lidström and Carl Olof Holm.

Nydqvist was an engineer while Holm was rather a businessman, however, both had a technical education and worked for other companies before. Prior to founding Trollhättans Mekaniska Verkstad, Antenor Nydqvist went for a three-year journey across Europe, spending most of the time in France, England and Germany. His technical expertise was well-founded and also shown by the fact that he held numerous patents dealing with water turbines, the first main product of Trollhättans Mekaniska Verkstad.

Soon, the company was renamed to Nydqvist och Holm AB (NOHAB). Meanwhile, the product scope was widened: aside from water turbines, agricultural machines and other tools were produced, too, as well as steam engines for road and railway use (starting with 1850). The first steam locomotive of entirely own production left the factory halls in 1865.

From 1867 to 1916, Antenor Nydqvist was sole proprietor of the enterprise; at that time, NOHAB became the largest private company in Sweden. In the mean time, the original factory location was given up and a new site (i. e., NOHAB's final place) was established on the opposite side of the Trollhätte canal. In 1916, NOHAB became a public company with one of its new co-proprietors being SKF (Svenska Kullager Fabriken) of Göteborg. The descendants of Antenor Nydqvist kept working for NOHAB until 1930.

In 1920, NOHAB received the largest contract to that time: the Soviet Union placed an order for 1000 steam locomotives which was, however, reduced two years later to 500 units due to political reasons. The batch, delivered between September 1921 and December 1924, cost altogether 230 million Swedish crowns which was reciprocated by the Soviet Union with 56 tons of pure gold!

The company, employing about 2600 people at that time, found no comparable orders upon completion of the 500 locomotives and promptly faced financial difficulties which could be only partly mitigated by the construction of other products, such as bridges or bridge elements.

Urged to do so by the Swedish government, NOHAB began building aircraft motors in the 1930's. The subsidiary NOHAB Flygmotorfabrik AB purchased a license for building English Jupiter engines from Bristol Aeroplane Co. and began the production in 1933. NOHAB Flygmotorfabrik AB was later renamed to Svenska Flygmotor AB, eventually purchased by Volvo in 1970. Volvo Aero AB still continues to build jet engine parts for civil and military airplanes (among them the Gripen fighters to be used in Hungary), as well as parts for the Ariane rockets of the European Space Agency.

Between 1925 and 1935, NOHAB sought the cooperation of other companies, such as BOFORS, to hold its ground. This eventually resulted in BOFORS purchasing NOHAB in 1936 which then became BOFORS-NOHAB AB. In the 1930's, the product scope included mainly aircraft motors and turbines for power stations.

[luke978]

Here is mine:





204lb. Cast steel with a tool steel face.