Saturday, September 25, 2021

Our manufacturing past and canals



Our canals provided an essential means of transport now they offer a fascinating view of some of our manufacturing past. 

The future of British manufacturing looks to other means of transport. British Volt is just one example. 
 

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World

The title of my forthcoming book on the history of British manufacturing has changed to How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. 

The word ‘shaped‘ describes the story so much better than the original ‘created’. It also endures much longer. For whilst Arkwright might have created the first factory, British manufacturers have been shaping worldwide manufacturing ever since. 

Today it seems a brave, or even reckless, assertion to suggest that Britain might have shaped the manufacturing world. Yet, looking back through history, there is a grubby British thumb-print on many of the world’s manufacturing industries. In this book I try to explore the assertion by unfolding what is quite a remarkable story. In order to do this I have drawn on the detailed research of a great many people without whose work this volume would not have been possible. At the outset, I acknowledge my debt to them.

I am not saying that Britain alone shaped the manufacturing world, but, as I will explain, it almost certainly started a process that would continue over many decades. The role played by Britain diminished as that played by other nations increased, but it didn’t disappear; indeed, it remained strongly influential. 



Friday, September 17, 2021

Derby and British Manufacturing

In Derwent Mill in Derby in the 1720s a mill was established to produce silk, adopting a method that had been used in Italy. It is suggested that Arkwright may well have taken his inspiration from this. It is perhaps yet another instance where methods were developed in an unseen collaboration between people of many nations and regions. Derwent Valley Mills are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and house an exhibition of making.

That may have been Derby's first mention in the history of British manufacturing, but much more was yet to come. Here is but one illustration.

Henry Royce had run an electrical and mechanical business since 1884, and in 1904 met Charles Rolls, an old Etonian car dealer. Royce had made a car powered by his two-cylinder engine, which greatly impressed Rolls. The two agreed that four models would be made under the Rolls-Royce brand and that Rolls would have the exclusive right to sell them. The car was revealed at the Paris Motor Show of 1904. The two men needed to find a factory in which to make them. Derby offered them cheap electricity, and so they selected the site at Sinfin Lane where a factory was built to Royce’s design. 

Field Marshall Montgomery's Rolls-Royce

The Great Exhibition 1851 and my family

One of my treasured possessions is the signed cover of a copy of the catalogue of the Great Exhibition presented to my great-grandfather, Richard Williams, by the members of the Surgical and Anatomical Committee Class X, ‘as a slight token of the services rendered by him as Secretary’. 

Richard managed the business of John Weiss & Son, manufacturers of surgical instruments at 62 The Strand, and, I like to think, offered his services for the exhibition. John Weiss & Son had produced a most marvellous instrument comprising 1,851 knives. This was clearly a bit of showing off. Yet, behind the scenes, advances were being made in surgery with the work of Lister and others, and the makers of instruments were taking up the challenge to keep pace. Weiss & Son are still in business. I imagine Richard’s son, Alfred my grandfather at age nineteen, visiting the exhibition and being inspired by all he saw. He would go on to register a number of patents during his varied career, including that for a life raft for which he won a number of awards. It was an age of invention. 

The catalogue does make fascinating reading and leaves the reader wanting a first-hand account of a visit and there is one first-hand account by a visitor with whom I am very familiar, Charlotte Brontë, my great-great uncle, William Smith Williams, having worked with her at her publishers. Charlotte’s relationship with the Exhibition was perhaps characteristic of the attitudes of many people removed from industry. On 17 April 1851, she wrote to her publisher George Smith’s mother to say, ‘I was nursing a comfortable and complacent conviction that I had quite made up my mind not to go to London this year: the Great Exhibition was nothing – only a series of bazaars under a magnified hothouse.’  She did though go, as she wrote to her father on 31 May 1851:

‘Yesterday we went to the Crystal Palace – the exterior has a strange and elegant but somewhat unsubstantial effect – The interior is like a mighty Vanity Fair  - the brightest colours blaze on all sides – and wares of all kinds – from diamonds to spinning jennies and Printing Presses are there to be seen – It was very fine – gorgeous – animated – bewildering…’

The Great Exhibition drew both great praise and harsh criticism. A wonderful series of lithographs were produced by Lowes Dickinson and this is available for us to see on the British Library website. Lowes Dickinson was William Smith Williams son in law.

William Smith Williams makes no comment on this major national event, or rather any comment he may have made has been lost. The involvement of Lowes Dickinson may suggest a visit by William’s daughter, Margaret, even though she and Lowes wouldn’t marry for a further six years. This involvement and William’s earlier connection with Henry Cole with a paper he wrote On Lithography, would certainly suggest to me that William himself would have visited. The lithographer for whom William had worked, Charles Hullmandel, was an exhibiter with a demonstration of the technique. 

Richard Williams

You can read more on How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and more on the Great Exhibition 



Sunday, September 12, 2021

What do we mean by manufacturing?

I tend to see manufacturing, as distinct from making, where there is an element of mass production and/or mechanisation. 

In historic terms, we see manufacturing appearing when textiles were produced in a manufactory such as a mill driven by water power, instead of the cottage.  Birmingham gunsmiths offer a different example with the manufacturing process split down into constituent parts with each carried out by a different person, often in a different workshop. We can see how the production line developed from this.

A related question is which pairs of hands are manufacturing and which are providing a related service. The Office of National Statistics, I think, stumbled across this issue when comparing manufacturing employment over the post war period where they saw services being outsourced and so the related employees no longer being included in the returns made by manufacturing companies. This links to an example I found on a manufacturing blog in which manufacturing companies are placed in the spotlight. I was surprised to find a component distributor included and was told that it was part of the supply chain.

There are then questions of ownership and geography. Rolls-Royce and JCB are British manufacturing companies which manufacture both in the UK and elsewhere. Nissan is a Japanese company which manufactures in many countries including Britain; the same is true of the growing number of electric vehicle related companies building manufacturing plant in Britain. Some toy manufacturers, for example, who used to manufacture in the UK now have their products made in China Are they all British manufacturers? 

What about Manufacturers and makers? This image from the Bovey Tracy Craft Fair shows a few of the two hundred stands where makers sell the pieces they have made. This is a vibrant part of the economy and can lead to manufacturing.

I have friends who design and make table wear. If a particular design attracts great interest they may ask 'manufacturing' businesses to make them. They are no longer hand made, but who is the manufacturer? An article in Monocle magazine tells of the revival in Stoke’s pottery manufacturers. Another friend told me of Somerset textile factories which are more and more undertaking contract work for makers. 

Are they all part of the bigger manufacturing picture ?

The British electronics company ARM came out of Acorn computers where it designed operating systems. These then have to be printed on silicon chips. Are both parts manufacturing? ARM decided to licence its designs for other companies to process  is it still a manufacturer? A comparison is with EMI which designed the brain scanner. They had a choice of whether to make it themselves or license the design for others to make. They chose the first route only to find themselves unable to meet demand..

You can read my take on How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World  

  



How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World is now available to pre-order

Phil Hamlyn Williams has completed his sixth book beginning an exploration of British manufacturing. His great-grandfather exhibited at the ...