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Mersen

About Mersen Sales

This site is operated by Gross Automation, an authorized distributor of Mersen (formerly Ferraz Shawmut) products. Gross Automation is located in Brookfield, Wisconsin and distributes industrial automation and electrical components.

This microsite serves as a technical reference for the Mersen product line, including industrial fuses, circuit protection devices, power semiconductors, fuse holders, disconnect switches, surge protection devices, and related accessories. All sales, pricing, and fulfillment are handled through Gross Automation.

About Mersen

Mersen is a global manufacturer of electrical power and advanced materials products. The company designs and manufactures fuses, cooling systems, power electronics components, and graphite specialties. Mersen operates in over 35 countries and serves the energy, transportation, electronics, and process industries.

From Shawmut and Ferraz to Mersen

  • 1885: The Shawmut Fuse Wire Company is founded in Boston.
  • 1893: It merges with Chase & Co. to become Chase-Shawmut.
  • 1905: Chase-Shawmut moves to Newburyport, Massachusetts, still Mersen's North American headquarters.
  • 1928: Ferraz is founded in France.
  • 1953: I-T-E Circuit Breaker Company buys Chase-Shawmut and keeps the name.
  • 1976: Gould buys I-T-E; the fuse business becomes Gould Shawmut.
  • 1999: Carbone Lorraine of Paris buys Gould Shawmut and merges it with Ferraz: Ferraz Shawmut is born.
  • 2010: On June 16, Carbone Lorraine and all its subsidiaries, Ferraz Shawmut included, take one name: Mersen. “We have not been purchased,” Mersen USA said at the time. The name change unified the group. Amp-Trap® 2000, Surge-Trap®, UltraSafe™, TPMOV® and Tri-Onic® kept their names, and legacy Ferraz Shawmut part numbers remain valid today.

Source: Mersen's June 16, 2010 announcement (PDF), and Mersen's North America quality manual.

Where the name comes from

Mersen took its name from two stories, and neither is about a merger.

Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) was a French mathematician and physicist who made himself the hub of Europe's scientific conversation. He corresponded with Descartes, Pascal, Fermat and Torricelli, and passed their ideas along at a time when there were no journals to do it. He was modest and practical, and his name lives on in Mersenne primes, still hunted by computers today, and in Mersenne's laws of vibrating strings.

The Treaty of Mersen was signed in 870 at Mersen, today's Meerssen, near Maastricht. There, Charlemagne's grandsons Charles the Bald and Louis the German divided their nephew Lothair II's kingdom. The lines they drew foreshadowed France, Lorraine (the Lorraine in Carbone Lorraine, Mersen's former name) and the Holy Roman Empire.

A name about experts connected across borders suits a company whose fuses and materials protect electrical systems on every continent. Mersen's own tagline puts it as “multiple areas of expertise, a single source of energy.” (Mersen also notes that the letters stand for Materials, Electricity, Research, Sustainability and ENergy.)

Ferraz Shawmut legacy references

For legacy Ferraz Shawmut part numbers, catalogs and cross-references, see ferrazshawmutsales.com, our sister site, also operated by Gross Automation.