1908 - The Briggs Manufacturing Company was founded by Walter Owen Briggs to become the worlds largest independent producer of automobile bodies. The company was so successful that Briggs purchased the Detroit Tigers baseball team in 1935 and won the World Series in 1945. As the major car companies began to produce their own car bodies, Mr. Briggs looked for ways to keep his employees working, and in the late 1930''s he expanded in to steel plumbing-ware production. With the purchase of Abingdon Sanitary Manufacturing in 1946 and Case Manufacturing in 1963, Briggs not only expanded its production capabilities, but also showed itself to be and innovative force in the plumbing industry. Case, as the developer of the one-piece toilet and the first to manufacture plumbing-ware in a variety of colors, put Briggs on the cutting edge of the industry. In 1973, Briggs built the Knoxville Steel Plant, the largest porcelain-on-steel plumbing-ware plant in the world...