The Ferranti Spirit

Sebastian de Ferranti was born in Liverpool in 1864, the son of a photographer whose family had come from Bologna. Cesar had married Juliana the daughter of artist William Scott. Juliana, born in 1825, was a musician and had been teaching music. Their ambition for their son was in the arts, but Sebastian was fascinated by all things mechanical. He told them very early on that he would become a Manufacturing Engineer. He made models and carried out experiments. When he went to school at St Augustine's in Ramsgate he was given space in the school's kitchen to continue his experiments. He was no academic, but his father managed to secure a place for him at University College London. This was not a success, and his father's illness and consequent financial problems meant that Sebastian had to leave after only a few months in order to earn his living and keep his mother.

Ferranti’s fascination, from a very early age, was with power generation and transmission. He was convinced that power generation did not need to be located near to the user, but rather close to the source of energy used. At school in Ramsgate, he had made both an electric light and a dynamo.

He found work with Siemens Brothers as a research assistant where he worked with dynamos and lighting. He had in particular devised an improvement to the Siemens machine. One of Ferranti's father's professional acquaintances was Alfred Thompson, an electrical enthusiast. He saw huge merit in what Ferranti was doing and introduced him to a solicitor, Francis Ince. Together they formed Ferranti, Thompson Ince & Co, and Ferranti filed a patent application. By chance he met Sir William Thomson the future Lord Kelvin who was filing a patent for a similar invention. The invention was in effect shared and marketed at the Ferranti-Thomson alternator. The company received further investment from the Robert Hammond's Electric Light and Power Supply Company and some ninety-two other investors. I write of the scramble for electrical dominance in my blog piece on American manufacturers. It was a tough time for the British.

Ferranti parted company with both Hammond and Thompson and his first major project was the Grosvenor power station and then he moved on to build the first power station at Deptford in East London. I quoted in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World how the power company's chairman described Ferranti's plant to the press. It was an astonishing project for anyone, let alone a young man.

Sebastian Ferranti's other passion was engineering excellence which he would achieve at the workbench with experimentation rather that at the drawing board. This was an expensive passion and caused much anxiety to Francis Ince whose focus was rather more on business. In an electrical world that was intensely competitive and in an economy that was struggling, this passion drove the company into receivership. However, the joint receivers believed in Sebastian and introduced much needed financial discipline. After two years the company was free once more.

Vincent, Sebastian's son, had seen at first hand the fall of the business and the introduction of financial discipline and when he took over he was unmoving in his commitment to financial prudence. However, the Ferranti Spirit was in his DNA and he encouraged innovation by his departmental managers. He saw the merit in diversification, but it was defence which proved the most attractive and challenging. I write of the growth of the company in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

The third generation's leader was another Sebastian, Vincent's son, who took the chair when Sir Vincent retired in 1963 after thirty-three years with the company. It was by then large, and dispersed with a wide product range and still that Ferranti spirit. I write of the work on the company in three related sectors (Heavy Electrical Manufacturing; Radio, Television and Telecommunications; and Computers and Semiconductors) in Vehicles to Vaccines in which I also tell of the end of this great company.

When the NEB took a stake in the Ferranti company to save it, there were voices who condemned what had become known as the ‘Ferranti spirit’. This spirit was the beating heart of this family company and was a determination to push back the boundaries of technology. In this the Ferranti company was hugely successful. Ferranti’s problem was money. The family was determined not to seek external investors for fear of the constraints they would impose. In the end it was a disastrous investment under the chairmanship of a non family member which led to its final demise.

Further reading:

Wilson, John F., Ferranti - A History - Building a Family Business, 1882-1975 (Lancaster: Carnegie Publishing, 1999)