AWI

Armstrong World Industries, Inc.

A maker of suspended ceiling systems, specialty walls, and exterior metal panels for commercial buildings, sold to distributors, home centers, and contractors. It began in 1860 as a one-room cork-cutting shop in Pittsburgh, where founder Thomas Armstrong stamped his name on every cork and delivered his first orders by wheelbarrow. That cork business later grew into the company that invented acoustical ceiling tiles, the suspended ceilings found in offices and schools today.