How it started
History
Joseph Hibbert was a brass founder and maker of gauges and taps. These skills were used to produce heald sizing equipment, including the Shirley box sizer under licence, an essential part of the weaving process for cotton in which the warp is stiffened before weaving.
In the recession of the 1930s, Platt Brothers, Howard and Bullough, Brooks and Doxey, Asa Lees, Dobson and Barlow, Joseph Hibbert, John Hetherington and Tweedales and Smalley merged to become Textile Machinery Makers Ltd., but the individual units continued to trade under their own names until the 1970, when they were merged into a single company called Platt UK Ltd. In 1991 the company name changed to Platt Saco Lowell.
From Wikipedia’s article on Joseph Hibbert, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2