In Business

Staff -- Control Engineering, 11/1/1999

• Joseph Faber Keithley, founder of Keithley Instruments Inc. (Solon, O.), died Oct. 1 at the age of 84 of complications caused by pneumonia following a prolonged illness. Mr. Keithley founded his company in a Cleveland workshop in 1946, and it grew to become a $100 million producer of electronic test and measurement instruments and systems. Mr. Keithley is survived by his wife, Nancy, and their three children, including Joseph P. Keithley, who became the firm's president, ceo, and board chairman in 1991.
• Orsi (Genoa, Italy), a process control and production management software company, and Hilco Technologies (Earth City, Mo.), a manufacturer of model-based MES software, announced Oct. 19 they will merge to form Cube Technology. The new company will maintain two corporate headquarters in Genoa and St. Louis. Earlier this year, Orsi formed an alliance with Endress+Hauser, which included the acquisition by Endress+Hauser of a minority interest in Orsi.
• Steeplechase Software Inc. (Ann Arbor, Mich.), SBS Technologies Inc.-Embedded Computers (SBS-EC, Raliegh, N.C.), and Motion Engineering Inc. (MEI, Santa Barbara, Calif.) recently partnered to create an embedded motion controller with four-axes motion control in an open architecture, PC-based control environment. The new system uses Microsoft Windows NT Embedded 4.0 software and Steeplechase's Visual Logic Controller.