Top Left: Our first products were built on the Murphy’s kitchen table in Mt. Carmel, Illinois, by Pat and his wife Rosalie. Bottom Left: Testing control panels before being shipped to their final destination, circa 1958. Right: Company founder Frank W. “Pat” Murphy out in the oil fields, circa 1939.

FW Murphy Production Controls was born out of one man’s search for simple, reliable engine protection. While Frank W. “Pat” Murphy was a sales manager for a major equipment distributor in the 1930s, he found that his customers’ main complaint was “burned up” engines. They were equipped with poor quality, non-indicating safety switches which were difficult to test and often inoperative. Pat decided to develop a simpler yet more effective “Safety Switch.”

Pat’s idea was to combine an indicating gage with a switch that would stop the engine when low oil pressure or high coolant temperature existed. It was a simple design, easy to understand – and it worked well. Operators loved the new design because they could see the operating gage, adjust the trip point to their needs and test the switch for operation. His invention was so well accepted, Pat decided to devote 100 percent of his time to manufacturing his “Murphy Safety Switch.” Production began with Pat and his wife, Rosalie, building the instruments on their kitchen table in Mt. Carmel, Illinois.

Over the past 85 years, we have developed hundreds of products that monitor and control compressors, pumps, generators and more. Our control systems monitor pressure, temperature, liquid level, overspeed, time and vibration. We cover it all from simple start/stop operations to sophisticated automation systems. Many of our products and systems carry major international authority approvals.

In 2009, FW Murphy merged with EControls, and the companies worked together under the Enovation Controls company and then as Genisys Controls. During this time, FW Murphy produced many of its successful products such as EICS, Centurion and M-Link.

The Dover Corporation acquired FW Murphy Production Controls in 2023, to operate as part of Dover Precision Components (an operating unit of Dover Corporation within its Pumps & Process Solutions segment).

FW Murphy - Configurable Control Panel - Brochure