Transoner Press Room

The oldest Company records date to 1867, when E. W. Face was a contractor on the first major hotel built in Norfolk, Va. after the Civil War.
E. W. Face & Son first took corporate form in 1888.

The Face Companies trace their roots to the brick business of founder E. W. Face.

E. W. Face & Son was one of the first brick makers to use oil-fired kilns. For decades, Face was the largest producer of bricks in Norfolk and southeastern Virginia.

During the mid-1900's, The Face Companies became general and, later, specialty contractors in commercial and industrial concrete floors and toppings.

In the 1970's, The Face Companies developed an expertise in the placement of extraordinarily flat floors for high-density warehousing... coining the word "Superflat".

To monitor floor quality, Face developed the first instrument that could accurately measure concrete flatness and levelness... the Face Floor Profileograph.

Face consultants have worked on more than 5,000 projects on six continents.

The Dipstick is now recognized as the instrument of record for floor and pavement profile measurement.

Dipsticks are used by contractors, testing labs and government agencies in 27 countries.

The Edward W. Face Company became the leading authority in the field of floor profile technology.

In the 1980's, Face Construction Technologies introduced the first "do it yourself" floor profile measurement device - the Dipstick^®.

Adopted in 1988 by the American Society for Testing & Materials (ASTM), and in 1989 by the ACI (American Concrete Institute) the Face Profile Number System (the "F-Number" System) is now the industry standard.

In late 1992, Face International Corporation was created to explore the potential of the Smart Vibration Concept -- or SVC.

Face engineers believed that SVC could drive the water and air from fresh concrete within seconds, to allow finishing immediately after strike-off...and they were right.

The potential concept makes concrete hard enough to walk on almost instantly. SVC was first demonstrated in 1993... and a full-scale test was successful in late 1995.

SVC uses high-tech actuators (which had just been introduced in the early 1990's), so Face scientists next concentrated R & D efforts on creating economical & reliable vibrators.

It was in the development of its concrete vibrating systems that Face acquired three exclusive and non-exclusive licenses from NASA for its THUNDER^® piezoelectric actuator and sensor technology.

Since 1996, Face has been awarded 18 patents related to SVC and THUNDER.

THUNDER moves more distance with more force than any other piezoelectric actuator. It can be used for motion control, to drive pumps, as a switch... and in hundreds of other applications.

Face International Corporation began sales of THUNDER to R & D labs in the private sector, universities and government agencies in 1997.

Perhaps the most unexpected development came while Face engineers were testing a circuit for a vibrating concrete tool. They noted strange behavior in the circuit and they investigated.

What they discovered led to the revolutionary Transoner^® family of piezoelectric transformers (PTs). Transoners have already demonstrated six times the power capacity of other PTs. (80 watts vs. 12 watts).

The patented Transoner technology has been validated by leading experts at the National Science Foundation Center for Power Electronics.

Advantages include overall size, flat profile, weight, low emission of -- and high resistance to -- electromagnetic fields, efficiency and, in many cases, cost.

In early 2000, a Transoner-based circuit achieved greater overall performance than any previous transformer used in a Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp (CCFL) ballast.

CCFLs (which illuminate flat panel displays, like those in laptop computer screens) are now the biggest market for PTs.

After investing $12 million in R & D over a period of six years, The Face Companies began to commercialize their SVC and Transoner technologies in 1999.

The Face Companies' business model includes maintaining a central research and development company (Face International Corp.) which will continue to "spin-off" operating companies once new technologies are ready for commercialization.

Face Electronics, LC

This Company owns the intellectual property relating to the Transoner family of piezoelectric transformers.