Diversified Success

In the empty expanses of Islamabad, the new capital that Pakistan plans to erect in the cool foothills of the Himalayas, the first buildings scheduled to go up are a cluster of airy structures designed by famed US. Architect Edward Stone. Set in a cloistered water garden, the biggest of Stone's buildings will house Pakistan's first nuclear reactor-one of the latest sales made by New York's booming American Machine & Foundry Co

Fifteen years ago, AMF was a with only a handful of products (cigarette baking and stitching machines) and annual sales of about $12,000,000. Today with 42 plants and 19 research facilities scattered across 17 countries, AMF turns out products ranging from remote-controlled toy airplanes to ICBM launching systems. Thanks to AMF's determined pursuit of diversification and growth products, its 1960 sales were $361 million, its earnings $24 million. And in the glum opening months of 1961, the company's sales and earnings hit new first-quarter highs

Grow or Die. AMF's expansion is the work of slow-spoken, low-pressured Chairman Morehead Patterson, 64, who took over the company in 1943 from his father Rufus L. Patterson, inventor of the first automated tobacco machine. After World War II, Morehead Patterson decided that the company had to grow or die. Searching for new products, he turned up a crude prototype of an automatic bowling-pm setter. To get the necessary cash to develop the intricate gadget, Patterson swapped off AMF stock to acquire eight small companies with fast-selling products. The Pinspotter, perfected and put on the market in 1951, helped to turn bowling into the most popular U.S. competitive sport. Despite keen competition from the Brunswick Corp., AMF has remained the world's largest maker of automatic Pin setters. With 68,000 machines already on lease in the U.S. (for an average annual gross of $68 million), AMF last week got $3,000,000 contract to equip a new chain of bowling centers in the East.

Still in pursuit of growth, AMF two years ago decided to see if the Pinspotter could do for bowling abroad what it has done in the U.S. In Britain, AMF now has eight Pinspotter-equipped bowling centers; in operation and another 52 planned. In Japan, where the bowling craze is just beginning to hit, the company has contracted to automate 100 new lanes, including a new center in Korakuen Park, Tokyos equivalent of Yankee Stadium. In Australia, the first year's production of AMF's Sydney Pinspotter factory is already sold out. In all, AMF has installed or on order 2,800 Pinspotters in 17 foreign countries, counts on the nascent global bowling boom to substantially increase its 1960 overseas sales of $22 million. To expand its line of recreational equipment, AMF has bought W. J. Voit Rubber Corp. (tread rubber, scuba gear), Ben Hogan Co. (golfing equipment), and Wen-Mac Corp. (engine-powered toy airplanes).

Fight Against Fat. In the defense field, AMF is the builder of the launching silos for the Titan and Atlas ICBMs, has also developed the rail-car launching system for the solid-fueled Minuteman ICBM.

In nuclear energy, the company is running neck and neck with General Dynamics as the world's largest suppliers of research reactors, has already installed 21 reactors from Japan to Portugal, and is negotiating to set up two more in South America. At the instigation of Carter Burgess, 45, onetime president of TWA, who became AMF's president in 1958. the company is also developing equipment to speed airport handling of jet aircraft, is currently testing a tractor that can push jetliners at 40 m.p.h., and also provide the electric power to start them.

Is there another Pinspotter in AMF's future? Chairman Patterson cautiously admits to the hope that perhaps the firm's intensive research into purifying brackish and fouled water might produce another product breakthrough. "Companies, like people," says Patterson, "get arteriosclerosis. My job is to see that AMF doesn't." He sometimes hires promising young men even if he has no immediate job for them. But, says Patterson, "I never hire a man unless he knows more than I do. That way, they push me instead of my having to push them.''

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