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Medusa
| Company History: Medusa Corporation |
Type: Public Company
Address: 3008 Monticello Boulevard, Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118, U.S.A.
Telephone: (216) 371-4000
Fax: (216) 371-2912
Employees: 1,100
Sales: $376 million (1997)
Stock Exchanges: New York
Ticker Symbol:MSA
Incorporated: 1892 as Sandusky Portland Cement Company
SIC: 3421 Cutlery; 1423 Crushed & Broken Granite
Medusa Corporation is one of the oldest cement companies in the United States, having been in business for over a century. The company is engaged in the production and marketing of portland and masonry cements; mining, processing, and marketing construction aggregates, lawn & garden, and industrial limestone products; and providing construction services for highway safety. Its operations are principally in the eastern half of the United States, with strong market positions in the Great Lakes and Southeast regions.
The company can trace its origins to the founding of Sandusky Portland Cement Company of West Virginia in 1892 by Spencer Newberry and Arthur St. John Newberry. The first cement plant was built at Bay Bridge, Ohio, that year. A second facility was built at Syracuse, Indiana, in 1901, but was later abandoned in 1920. The name was changed to Sandusky Portland Cement Company of Ohio. In 1907, the company opened a plant in Dixon, Illinois, and constructed a white cement plant at York, Pennsylvania. The company was reincorporated in Ohio in 1916 as Sandusky Cement Co. Founders Arthur and Spencer Newberry died in 1912 and 1922, respectively.
In 1924, the company introduced waterproof nonstaining white cement. New white and gray cement plants were erected at York, Pennsylvania. The company changed names again in April 1929 to Medusa Portland Cement Company. Later that same year, the company acquired Crescent Portland Cement Company in Wampum, Pennsylvania, and Manitowoc Portland Cement and merged with Newaygo Portland Cement Company in September.
In 1938, the company opened a white cement grinding plant in Paris, Ontario, Canada. The western extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the Ohio Turnpike were built with Medusa cement around that time.
In the mid-1960s, the company committed to build its first greenfield cement plant in four decades and the Charlevoix plant came on-line in 1967. A diversification effort also began in the mid-1960s with several aggregate acquisitions. In September 1966, the company acquired Western Indiana Aggregate Corporation in a stock swap. June of the following year saw the company acquiring Lehigh Stone Company for stock and approximately $121,000 in cash. In June 1968, the company acquired Raid Quarries Corporation in a stock swap. The company acquired The James H. Drew Corporation, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, in a stock swap in April 1970. June 1970 saw the company buying New Hudson Sand & Gravel Inc. In July, the company swapped stock for Bowling Green, Kentucky-based McLellan Stone Company Inc. and paid $425,000 for that company's affiliated McLellan Construction Company Inc. In April 1971, the company acquired Wanatah Trucking Company Inc. in a stock swap. May saw the company acquiring State Contracting and Stone Company Inc. in another stock swap.
Although most of Medusa's acquisitions in the 1960s and 1970s fell outside the cement industry, the Penn Dixie Cement Plant in Clinchfield, Georgia plant was purchased in 1971, marking the company's first move outside its primary marketing area in the Great Lakes region of the United States. The plant was in poor condition and the company spent $13 million renovating and modernizing the facility. In February 1972, the company acquired Marion Brick Corporation in a stock swap. By the end of March 1972, fully one-third of Medusa Portland's business was in non-cement products. In light of this diversification, the company changed its name to Medusa Corporation.
In January 1974, the company acquired Davis-Snyder Companies, Holston River Quarry, and Holston River Paving Company, and in June acquired Salem Stone Company. That same year, Medusa also acquired Thomasville Stone and Lime Company. In March 1975 the company swapped stock to assume certain liabilities of Woodbridge Clay Products. In May 1977, the company acquired Miller Bros. Company and Geohegan & Mathis Inc. for stock and in June 1977, the company paid approximately $10 million in cash for substantially all the assets of MCQ Inc.
A takeover battle for Medusa began in 1977, with companies like Moore-McCormack Resources, Ogleby Norton, and Kaiser Cement and Gypsum seeking to purchase the company. It ended in January 1979 with the company's acquisition by Crane Company. Thomas M. Evans, Crane's CEO, completed the modernization and expansion of the Charlevoix plant in December of that same year and took a series of aggressive steps to downsize the company and generate cash. June 1978 saw the sale of Marion Brick for $9 million, a nice profit on the less than 200,000 share stock swap the company made in 1972 to acquire it. In 1979, the Manitowoc cement plant was closed and the Toledo, Ohio cement plant was sold. The Dixon, Illinois cement plant was sold in 1980, together with several aggregate operations. In 1981, the York, Pennsylvania gray cement plant was closed and the York white cement plant was sold the following year.
By 1984, the year Robert S. Evans replaced his father as CEO of Crane, Medusa was a smaller and leaner company that was ready to build on its strengths. Over the next five years, major investments were made to upgrade the Charlevoix, Clinchfield, and Wampum plants. In addition, efforts were made to improve the distribution capability from Charlevoix, including new terminals in Toledo and Owens Sound, Ontario, Canada. By the late 1980s, Medusa had become the low-cost producer of cement and aggregate in most of its major markets.
In an effort to maximize Medusa's value to Crane's shareholders, Medusa was spun off from Crane in October 1988. Immediately prior to the spinoff, Medusa paid an $84.3 million dividend to Crane using borrowed funds, eliminating all but approximately $131,000 of equity from its balance sheet. Crane's shareholders received $6.88 per share in Medusa's stock, tax-free.
From internally generated cash flow, Medusa reduced the borrowings from the Crane dividend substantially over the next few years. The company had emerged from the Crane years with a lean organization, a tradition of strict financial controls, and excellent operating assets. In May 1990, the company acquired the operating assets and mineral reserves of three aggregate operations in western Pennsylvania for $7.7 million.
With debt down to comfortable levels, Medusa took advantage of the 1991-92 downturn in the cement industry by buying a cement plant in Demopolis, Alabama, related assets, an 814,000-ton, single-kiln plant, and nine cement distribution terminals in the southeastern United States from Lafarge Corporation at a depressed price of $50.5 million in early 1993. In 1996, Thomasville Stone and Lime's name was changed to Medusa Minerals Company.
In 1997, Medusa Minerals tripled in size through the acquisition of Lime Crest Corporation and White Stone Company of Southwest Virginia, establishing a network of industrial limestone and lawn and garden operations along the eastern seaboard. Sparta, New Jersey-based Lime Crest, was acquired in January for $12.8 million. Whitestone, based in Castlewood, Virginia, was a privately owned industrial limestone and aggregate producer, and operated a limestone pelletizing plant in Paradise, Pennsylvania. Whitestone was also a leading producer of home and garden products and other industrial limestone products in certain mid-Atlantic markets and the Southeast, as well as the leading producer of construction aggregates in southwest Virginia. Whitestone's acquisition, combined with Medusa's operations in Thomasville, Pennsylvania, and Sparta, New Jersey, gave the company significant added presence in the lawn and garden industry and with industrial limestone products in the eastern half of the United States.
Also in 1997, Medusa announced the "Clinchfield 2000 Project," a $56 million plant modernization and expansion of its Clinchfield, Georgia cement complex and related distribution facilities. The remodeling promised to boost production of clinker, a cement component, from 175,000 tons per year to approximately 760,000 tons annually.
As the U.S. cement industry's most profitable and longest-lived company, Medusa Corporation seemed well-situated to remain in a leading position.
Further Reading
Akroyd, T. N. W., Concrete: Properties and Manufacture, New York: Pergamon, 1962.
Bogue, Robert Herman, The Chemistry of Portland Cement, New York: Reinhold, 1955.
A Chronicle of Cleveland, Cleveland: Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, 1940.
Glover, William Bouck, and G. Rowland Cornell, The Development of American Industries, New York: Prentice-Hall, 1951.
Lesley, Robert W., History of the Portland Cement Industry in the United States, Chicago: International Trade Press, 1924.
Meade, Richard K., "The Manufacture of Portland Cement," Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine, January 1925, pp. 149-78.
------, "The Portland Cement Industry," Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, September 1926.
Sedgwick, John, "Strong But Sensitive," Atlantic, April 1991, pp. 70-82.
Sobel, Robert, Centennial in Cement: A History of Medusa Corporation, 1892-1992, Cambridge, Mass.: The Winthrop Group Inc., 1992, 58 p.
United States Department of Commerce, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Washington, D.C.: U.S.G.P.O., 1975.
Wilcox, John G., The Portland Cement Industry, Philadelphia: Robert Morris Associates, 1928.
— Daryl F. Mallett
| Wikipedia: Medusa |
In Greek mythology, Medusa (Greek:
Μέδουσα, "guardian, protectress"[1]) was a monstrous
chthonic female character; gazing upon her could turn onlookers to stone. She was beheaded by
the human hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head as a weapon[2] until giving it to the goddess Athena to place on
her shield. In
Medusa in classical mythology
| Topics in Greek mythology |
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Some classical references refer to three Gorgons; Jane Ellen Harrison considered that the tripling of Medusa into a trio of sisters was a secondary feature in the myth:
- "The triple form is not primitive, it is merely an instance of a general tendency... which makes of each woman goddess a trinity, which has given us the Horae, the Charites, the Semnai, and a host of other triple groups. It is immediately obvious that the Gorgons are not really three but one + two. The two unslain sisters are mere appendages due to custom; the real Gorgon is Medusa." (Harrison 1903:187)
The three gorgon sisters—Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale—were children of Phorcys and Ceto, or sometimes, Typhon and Echidna, in each case chthonic monsters from an archaic world. Their genealogy is shared with other sisters, the Graeae, as in Aeschylus's Prometheus Unbound, who places both trinities of sisters far off "on Kisthene's dreadful plain":
- "Near them their sisters three, the Gorgons, winged
- With snakes for hair— hated of mortal man—"
While ancient Greek vase-painters and relief carvers imagined Medusa and her sisters as beings born of monstrous form, sculptors and vase-painters of the fifth century began to envisage her as a being beautiful as well as terrifying. In an ode written in 490 BCE Pindar already speaks of "fair-cheeked Medusa".[3] In a late version of the Medusa myth, related by the Roman poet Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.770), Medusa was originally a beautiful nymph, "the jealous aspiration of many suitors," but when she was raped by the "Lord of the Sea" Poseidon in Athena's temple, the goddess transformed her beautiful hair to serpents and she made her face so terrible to behold that the mere sight of it would turn a man to stone.
In all the versions, while Medusa was pregnant by Poseidon, she was beheaded in her sleep by the hero Perseus, who was sent to fetch her head by King Polydectes of Seriphus. With help from Athena and Hermes, who supplied him with winged sandals, Hades's cap of invisibility, a sword, and a mirrored shield, he accomplished his quest. The hero slew Medusa by looking at her reflection in the mirror instead of directly at her to prevent being turned into stone. When the hero severed Medusa's head, from her neck two offspring sprang forth: the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor who later became the hero wielding the golden sword.
Jane Ellen Harrison notes that "her potency only begins when her head is severed, and that potency resides in the head; she is in a word a mask with a body later appended... the basis of the Gorgoneion is a cultus object, a ritual mask misunderstood." (Harrison 1922:187). In Odyssey xi, Homer does not specifically mention the Gorgon Medusa,
-
-
- "lest for my daring Persephone the dread :From Hades should send up an awful monster's grizzly head"
-
Harrison's translation notes "the Gorgon was made out of the terror, not the terror out of the Gorgon (Harrison 1922: 187, note 3).
According to Ovid, in North-West Africa Perseus flew past the Titan Atlas, who stood holding the sky aloft, and transformed him into stone. In a similar manner, the corals of the Red Sea were said to have been formed of Medusa's blood spilled onto seaweed when Perseus laid down the petrifying head beside the shore. Furthermore the poisonous vipers of the Sahara, in the Argonautica 4.1515, Ovid's Metamorphoses 4.770 and Lucan's Pharsalia 9.820, were said to have grown from spilt drops of her blood.
Perseus then flew to his mother's island where she was about to be forced into marriage with the king. He cried out "Mother, shield your eyes", and everyone but his mother was turned into stone by the gaze of Medusa's head.
Then he gave the Gorgon's head to Athena, who placed it on her shield, the Aegis. Some say the
goddess gave Medusa's magical blood to the physician
Modern interpretations
Psychoanalysis
In 1940, Sigmund Freud's Das Medusenhaupt (Medusa's Head) was published posthumously. This article lay the framework for his significant contribution to a body of criticism surrounding the monster. Medusa is presented as “the supreme talisman who provides the image of castration -- associated in the child's mind with the discovery of maternal sexuality -- and its denial. The snakes are multiple phalluses and petrifaction represents the comforting erection.”[4][5] Psychoanalysts continue archetypal literary criticism to the present day. In 2002's The Rape of Medusa in the Temple of Athena: Aspects of Triangulation in the Girl by Dr. Beth Seeley, analyzes Medusa's punishment for the ‘crime’ of having been raped in Athena's temple as an outcome of the goddess' unresolved conflicts with her father, Zeus.[6]
Feminism
In the 20th Century, feminists have reassessed Medusa's appearances in literature and in modern culture, including the use of Medusa as a logo by fashion company Versace.[7][8][9] The attack on Medusa is discussed as a potential example of violence against women or rape.
The name "Medusa" itself is often used in ways not directly connected to the mythological figure but to suggest the gorgon's abilities or connote malevolence; despite her origins as a beauty, the name in common usage "came to mean monster."[10] The book Female Rage: Unlocking Its Secrets, Claiming Its Power by Mary Valentis and Anne Devane notes that "When we asked women what female rage looks like to them, it was always Medusa, the snaky-haired monster of myth, who came to mind ... In one interview after another we were told that Medusa is 'the most horrific woman in the world' ... [though] none of the women we interviewed could remember the details of the myth."[11]
Medusa in art
From ancient times, the Medusa was immortalized in numerous works of art, including:
- Medusa on the breastplate of Alexander the Great, as depicted in the Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii's House of the Faun (c. 200 BC)
The "Rondanini Medusa" , a Roman copy of the Gorgoneion on the aegis of Athena- Medusa (oil on canvas) by Leonardo da Vinci
- Perseus with the Head of Medusa (bronze sculpture) by Benvenuto Cellini (1554)
- Medusa (oil on canvas) by Caravaggio (1597).
- Tête de Méduse, by Peter Paul Rubens (1618)
- Perseus with the Head of Medusa (marble sculpture) by Antonio Canova (1801)
Medusa (oil on canvas) by Arnold Böcklin (c. 1878)Perseus (bronze sculpture) by Salvador Dalí
Accompanied by a revival of the legend by Thomas Bulfinch's Mythology, "Medusa had become a common theme in art" by the nineteenth century. Edward Burne-Jones' Perseus Cycle of paintings and a drawing by Aubrey Beardsley gave way to the twentieth century works of Paul Klee, John Singer Sargent, Pablo Picasso, and Auguste Rodin's bronze sculpture The Gates of Hell.[12]
Ships
Notable naval ships named after the monster include the Pearl Harbor survivor USS Medusa (AR-1) and La Méduse, one of the most infamous shipwrecks of the Age of Sail and inspiration for the controversial Louvre painting, Raft of the Medusa.
Notes
- ^ Probably the feminine present participle of medein, "to protect, rule over" (American Heritage Dictionary; compare Medon, Medea, Diomedes, etc.). If not, it is from the same root, and is formed after the participle. OED 2001 revision, s.v.; medein in LSJ.
- ^ Bullfinch, Thomas. Bulfinch Mythology - Age of Fable - Stories of Gods & Heroes. Retrieved on 2007-09-07. “...and turning his face away, he held up the Gorgon’s head. Atlas, with all his bulk, was changed into stone.”
- ^ (Pythian Ode 12). Noted by Marjorie J. Milne in discussing a red-figured vase in the style of Polygnotos, ca. 450-30 BCE, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Milne noted that "It is one of the earliest illustrations of the story to show the Gorgon not as a hideous monster but as a beautiful woman. Art in this respect lagged bewhind poetry." (Marjorie J. Milne, "Perseus and Medusa on an Attic Vase" The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin New Series, 4.5 (January 1946, pp. 126-130) 126.p.)
- ^ Medusa in Myth and Literary History
- ^ Das Medusenhaupt (Medusa's Head. First published posthumously. Int. Z. Psychoanal. Imago, 25 (1940), 105; reprinted Ges. W., 17,47. The manuscript is dated May 14, 1922, and appears to be a sketch for a more extensive work. Translation, reprinted from Int. J. Psychoanal.,22 (1941), 69; by James Strachey.
- ^ Seelig, B.J. (2002). The Rape of Medusa in the Temple of Athena: Aspects of Triangulation. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 83:895-911.
- ^ Pratt, A. (1994). Archetypal empowerment in poetry: Medusa, Aphrodite, Artemis, and bears : a gender comparison. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253208653
- ^ Stephenson, A. G. (1997). Endless the Medusa: a feminist reading of Medusan imagery and the myth of the hero in Eudora Welty's novels.
- ^ Garber, Marjorie. The Medusa Reader, 24 February 2003, ISBN 0-415-90099-9.
- ^ The Medusa Reader, Introduction, pg. 1
- ^ Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon, pg. 218.
- ^ Wilk, Stephen R. Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon, 26 June 2000, pg. 200, ISBN 0-195-12431-6.
References
- Jane Ellen Harrison, (1903) 3rd ed. 1922. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion,: "The Ker as Gorgon"
See also
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
- Theoi Project, Medousa & the Gorgones References to Medusa and her sisters in classical literature and art
- "Medusa in Myth and Literary History" - English.uiuc.edu
- On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery, by Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Ancient coins depicting Medusa
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