Marconi and notable successors

Guglielmo Marconi, from Bolognia in Italy, at the age of 22, in 1898, set up Marconi Telegraph Company in a former mill in Chelmsford: the first wireless factory in the world. His fascination was with radio waves, and he built on earlier work, by Hertz and others, for his first patent registered in England in 1897.

He was born in Italy of an Italian father and Irish mother who had eloped ten years earlier. He was brought up largely by his doting mother who loved everything British; his father was distant and disapproving. He developed a fascination with science and electricity, frowned on by his father. He was no great scholar, but an obsessive experimentalist.

Maxwell had produced a theory supporting the existence of electromagnetic waves and eight years later Hertz had carried out experiments which demonstrated the theory. All this captured the imagination of the teenage Marconi who took over his mother’s loft to replicate Hertz’s experiments and improve upon them. A number of established scientists were exploring the theory of electromagnetic waves, Marconi’s only interest was in seeing whether the waves could transmit information. He found that whilst the transmitted wave might be weak, it could control a much stronger signal and so, for example, make a sound. Further experiments increased the range of transmission.

At the age of 21, Marconi was ready for backers to take forward his invention. His father approached the Italian Post Office, which declined. His mother took him to England where William Preece, the Chief Engineer of the British Post Office, had been experimenting with electromagnetic induction. Marconi lodged a patent application and was then introduced to Preece to whom he demonstrated his invention. A public demonstration followed in July 1896 with Morse messages sent a mile across London. Further public demonstrations followed in England and Italy. Marconi sold his patent rights to the company that bears his name receiving in exchange a controlling shareholding.

The choice of where to manufacture wireless equipment is interesting. He had experimented in London but suffered interference from the tram network. Chelmsford was far away from trams and had electrical engineers thanks to Crompton, and also factory space.

I write of the remarkable company he created in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

The company’s long term success owed a great deal to Marconi’s commitment to excellence. The company would recruit the best talent. Here are just two outstanding examples.

Dr Eric Eastwood

Dr Eric Eastwood who was recruited by Marconi after the war to lead its work on radar. He undoubtedly enhanced the technical expertise within the company which in turn led to it being the most significant part of GEC prior to that company’s breakup. Marconi Defence Systems was the perfect fit for British Aerospace with which it merged to become BAE Systems, now a respected and successful British company.

Eric Eastwood was born in Rochdale on 12 March 1910. His father was a mill worker eventually becoming an administrator. His mother kept a shop especially during periods when his father was laid off. Eric had a brother and two sisters who with Eric moved from school to school as their father sought work. It became clear that Eric was the most intellectually gifted and so the family decided to focus their resources in his schooling at Oldham. He was by all accounts a hard working and well organised student. This paid off with first scholarships to read Physics at Manchester and then to write a PhD at Cambridge.

His first career was in teaching physics which he did at Runcorn at a school founded by Brunner and Mond. He moved from there to Liverpool and in 1941 volunteered for the RAF. It didn't take long for his particular skills to be noticed and he was transferred to 60 Group which has responsibility for running the CH (chain home) network of radar stations. His first job was the calibration of one of the stations to take account of its physical position in order to report with a degree of accuracy on the position of enemy aircraft. Eric was promoted, eventually had full command of the whole of the home radar establishments.

After the war he joined English Electric in their Research Department at Stafford then, following EE's purchase of Marconi, Eric moved to Marconi Research Laboratories at Great Baddow near Chelmsford first as Deputy Director and then as Director in 1954. I write in Vehicles to Vaccines of the vital work carried out by Eric and his colleagues both to benefit the defence of these islands but also to advance the commercial success of the Marconi company.

He eventually retired from GEC in 1981 having also served on a number of governmental and professional committees. His contribution to radar was second to none. He received many awards including that of Knight Batchelor.

F.N. Sutherland

Frederick Neil Sutherland graduated from Cambridge and went to serve as a pilot in the RNAS joining English Electric in Preston in 1922. He started on the shop floor before becoming an apprentice. He was appointed Chief Engineer in South America and General Manager in Brazil before an appointment as Managing Director of English Electric South Africa. I write in Vehicles to Vaccines how he was chosen by George Nelson to run their new acquisition, Marconi. He turned out to be the perfect man for the job. Interestingly, he followed the tradition set by Marconi’s former boss, Admiral Grant, of involving his wife in the welfare of his employees, something I had only ever seen at the Central Ordnance Depot at Greenford in the early years of the Second World War.

During his tenure the turnover of Marconi grew from £2.5 million to £50 million becoming one of our largest exporters. With him at the helm the company won the Queens Award for Exports three years running.

Further reading:

• Jolly, W.P., Marconi (London: Constable, 1972)
• Jones, Francis Edgar ; Eric Eastwood, 12 March 1910 - 6 October 1981. Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. 1 November 1983; (29): 177–195. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.1983.0007

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Washington, Peterlee and Newton Aycliffe manufacturing history

In the late forties the New Towns initiative got under way with the objective of providing housing to those made homeless by enemy bombing or whose housing was seriously substandard. They were also aimed at addressing the unemployment arising from the closure of coal mines. The residential areas were to be combined with industrial estates to provide local employment but also with the necessary social infrastructure.

Newton Aycliffe and Peterlee came in the first phase in 1947 and 1948. Washington would follow in 1964. Washington comprised Chester le Street and fifteen villages, some existing and some new. Aycliffe (the word Newton was added later) was located within ten miles of each of Bishops Auckland, Darlington and Shildon. Peterlee was originally to be called Easington but was renamed after the miners leader Peter Lee.

Washington coming later than the early new towns had an updated employment agenda. The coal mines were closing, ship building was in decline as was related heavy engineering. Washington would seek lighter new industries to complement what was already present plus a good proportion of service industry.

The larger companies already in Washington were Newalls which provided insulation for shipping and Cooks Iron Foundry. With the first of the new town's industrial estates, Tube Products and Calders followed. Turner and Newall as it became had purchased the Washington Chemical Company which had exhibited at the Great Exhibition and had deep roots in the town.

The Dutch Philips were one of the first overseas manufacturers to come to Washington and were a mainstay until closure in 2003. The image is of the exterior of the Philips Factory (With thanks to Tyne & Wear Museums Reference: 5417/240). The Japanese JATCO which manufactures transmission established a plant in Washington to support the main Nissan plant nearby. It is now part of the North East Automotive Alliance with a focus on the transition to EV. BAE Systems manufacture sub components in a former Dunlop factory which had originally been built for Avon Rubber. Timex followed with a state of the art factory; as with a number of other industries, what was in demand in the sixties became the victim of technological development. The same was true of the RCA record pressing factory. Both closed.

Hitachi looked to build a plant to manufacture televisions. I wrote in Vehicles to Vaccines about the role of the Japanese in this sector. For Washington and the North East there would have been clear benefit in a large manufacturer supplying a growing market. The British television manufacturers disagreed and lobbied the government to block the investment. They succeeded and after much work and expenditure Hitachi went away. As I note below the company did eventually gain a foothold in the North East.

Newton Aycliffe had at its heart a major Royal Ordnance Factory which had filled shells in the Second World War. In 1946 the government persuaded the British Bakelite company to move to the former Royal Ordnance factory in this area of high unemployment. The company began producing PVC by batch processing using old machinery but, as demand grew, it invested in new equipment, initially from the British company Francis Shaw Ltd. In the early sixties, Bakelite merged with British Xylonite jointly owned by Union Carbide and Distillers. The factory, known as Hydro Polymers, became part of Ineos in 2008.

EBAC is the only British manufacturer of washing machines and it also makes Heat Pumps, Dryers, Dehumidifiers and ventilation equipment at the factory they set up in Newton Aycliffe.

Newton Aycliffe is home now to Hitachi Europe, one of the few remaining UK railway locomotive works, and the government owned semiconductor plant, Octric. The Second World War Royal Ordnance engineering factory at Birtley was nearby and the town is now home to Komatsu (UK) manufacturing medium sized diggers.

Peterlee is home to a large Caterpillar factory employing robot technology. It also hosts the North East Enterprise Park and other companies in the Nissan supply chain.

Further reading

Stephen Holley, Washington: Quicker by Quango - The History of Washington New Town 1964-1983 (Stevenage: Publications for Companies, 1983)

You can read more in Vehicles to Vaccines and in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World  

Kingston upon Thames manufacturing history

Kingston was possibly the most important market town in Surrey. Like so many places, its history was built on the wool trade. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it supplied London first with Surrey Whitewear pottery and then with Redwear. As London grew, Kingston supplied many of its needs using the Thames as the vital transport link. Turnpikes were built, but the Thames reigned supreme until the railways arrived in 1838. This first Kingston station was in Surbiton, but Kingston was becoming a centre for the growing residential areas of Surbiton, New Malden and Chessington.

Manufacturing came in earnest in the First World War, first with Thomas Sopwith manufacturing aircraft which would become iconic for the part they played in the war effort. It was all about the internal combustion engine. Racing driver, Kenelm Lee Guinness formed the KLG spark plug company to manufacture the version of the spark plug which he had invented. Bus and lorry manufacturer, Leyland, built their vehicles for the war effort.

Harry Hawker, who was Sopwith's chief test pilot, formed his own Hawker Aircraft Company after the war and it was agreed that the companies should be joined. Tragically he died in a flying accident in 1921 the year his company merged with Sopwith. Thomas Sopwith became chairman of the combined company which continued to develop aircraft in Kingston. In 1934 Hawker Siddeley was formed which drew together Hawker, Gloster of Cheltenham, Sir William Armstrong of Elswick, Newcastle and Armstrong Siddeley of Coventry.

In the Second World War, Hawkers manufactured their equally iconic Hurricane Fighter using also factory space at Langley near Slough. Leyland manufactured lorries and also tanks including Churchills, Centaurs and Comets. They built bombs at a rate of 400,000 a month. John Perrings made radio sets in a secret workshop above his furniture shop using employees seconded from the Hoover factory at Perrivale to teach his staff the necessary skills. Siebe Gorman in nearby Chessington made rubber suits for navy divers.

After the war Hawker Siddeley went on to produce further acclaimed aircraft not least the Harrier and it became part of the British Aircraft Corporation and then British Aerospace. The successor, BAE Systems, closed the Kingston factory in 1992. I write of the post war aircraft industry in Vehicles to Vaccines. The Hawk jet, produced by BAE Systems flown by the Red Arrows, was developed under Hawker ownership.

Decca Radar had a significant presence in Chessington and Tolworth and also in nearby Addlestone. The company emerged from the Decca Record Company in 1947 and moved to Tolworth in 1951. Three years later premises were taken in Chessington. Heavy radar for air traffic control and air defence was based in Tolworth. In the mid fifties, government informed the company that any further expansion had to be outside the immediate Surrey area and a site was taken on the Isle of Wight. Heavy radar was sold to Plessey in 1964. The remaining Surrey operations were focused on marine radar and this was bought by Racal in 1979. The legacy of Decca radar is now within BAE Systems.

Further reading:

• Shaan Butters, The Book of Kingston (Cardiff: Baron Books, 1995)
• https://woottonbridgeiow.org.uk/decca-legacy/index.php

Portsmouth manufacturing history

 Portsmouth was one of the earliest homes of naval shipbuilding; there is some evidence that Richard the Lionheart's ships taking him on the crusades were built there. Henry VII commissioned the first dry dock in 1495. The Mary Rose was built there as Henry VIII amassed galleons to keep up with the Spanish and Portuguese.

It wasn't only naval shipping, Portsmouth's ships travelled the globe with particular emphasis on trading in spices so much so that a part of the dock area became known as spice island.

Towns which were home to naval dockyards boomed in times of war, but when peace came so did unemployment and poverty. Yet war was never far away, especially with the French who posed a constant threat. In the years following the restoration of the monarchy, in 1665 Sir Bernard de Gomme, Engineer in Chief of all the King's castles reviewed coastal defences and began a fifty year programme in Portsmouth for the defence of the crucially important dockyard. In spite of all this civil engineering, shipbuilding continued notably with the 100 gun Britannia.

Naval harbours were also changing as a result of penal policy. The number of offences punishable by transportation increased with convict numbers beyond the capacity of penal colonies and so prison hulks became a feature in many harbours over filled with inmates in appalling conditions. The first fleet for Australia left in 1787 and began to relieve the pressure just in time to the renewed pressure of war from the French Republic.

Portsmouth, at the time of the Napoleonic wars, was home to naval shipbuilding on a massive scale. There were woodworking shops powered by steam, including engines from Boulton and Watt. Marc Isambard Brunel invented machines for making the thousands of pulley blocks that the navy needed. He collaborated with Henry Maudslay who made the machine tools required. It was a huge enterprise that dominated the town. It was the first example of mass production in Britain.

We need to take a step back to understand what was happening. Naval shipbuilding was an ancient trade in which old habits died hard. Sawyers were protective of their back breaking work in the saw pit even though in other countries water powered sawmills were gaining popularity. Small businesses supplying largely hand made pulley blocks were equally protective of their lucrative contracts. The navy's demands were huge and change was needed. The right man at the right time was Samuel Bentham, the brother of the political economist and prison reformer Jeremy Bentham. Samuel was put in charge of the dock yard and set about radical changes.

1840 saw the French employ steam power for their battleships and Portsmouth needed to follow suite. A separate area was set aside and the necessary skills recruited. I write in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World of the transition to iron and steel hulls propelled by steam power.

With the navy and military the overwhelmingly dominant employer, its importance is underlined by the growth in population from 30,000 in 1801 to 260,000 in 1931.

Portsmouth docks served the Royal Navy in two world wars. In 1905 the yard launched the Dreadnaught which rendered obsolete the capital ships of the world's navies. It went on to launch one of the largest ships ever built in Portsmouth at 27,500 tons the Queen Elizabeth and the 25,000 ton Iron Duke in 1914. In recent years the building and maintenance of naval ships has fallen more and more to the private sector in companies such as Babcock International and BAE Systems Marine.

Employment in naval activity declined from some 22,000 in 1945 to 6,500 in 1985. Nevertheless, Portsmouth has attracted other major employers. Top of the list must come IBM with their UK Headquarters but followed by the Inland Revenue computer centre, the Board of Trade and Zurich Insurance.

Further reading:

James Cramer, The Book of Portsmouth (Buckingham: Barracuda Books, 1985)

Chelmsford manufacturing history

 A treat for any amateur industrial archeologist, in 1987 Stanley Wood published a booklet describing Chelmsford Industrial Trail updated by Tony Crosby and Dave Buckley in 2018. This offers the reader a wonderful taste of this late industrial town and I draw upon it in this blog piece, though far from entirely.

Chelmsford was where Marconi first manufactured and I wrote extensively of him and his business in both How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines. Just a little earlier Colonel Crompton came to the town following a distinguished military career and bought a local iron works. This is at the heart of the development of electricity in Britain and, again I wrote of it in both books but also the American angle in this blog. There are many other connections with the town which I highlight below. So, to Chelmsford.

It was a Roman town as indeed was neighbouring Colchester. It was an agricultural centre opened up by the Chelmer and Blackwater navigation in 1797 and by the railway in 1843 with the opening of the Brentwood to Colchester line. The London Road Iron works was taken over by Richard Coleman in 1848 and three years later he was among the prize winners at the Great Exhibition. In 1866 the business became Coleman & Morton which produced highly regarded agricultural implements until 1907.

The Anchor Works, which Colonel Crompton bought in 1878, began life as an iron works in 1833 and was later taken over by THP Dennis another agricultural implement maker. Crompton made it a key actor in the electrification of Britain.

It was the coming of electricity and Cromptons which radically changed Chelmsford, not least because in due course its streets were lit by bright electric light. Dynamos needed power to drive them and neighbouring Colchester had James Paxman all too keen to get involved. Steam engines were a competitive market and so Cromptons developed a good number of fruitful relationships. In his Reminiscences he singles out Willans as his chief steam engine collaborator and describes the single generation unit that combined on one platform a dynamo made by Cromptons with a fast steam engine made by Willans & Robinson of Thames Ditton. Cromptons could claim credit for many prestigious installations including Lord Randolph Churchill's house and the Royal Courts of Justice. Of no less importance was the ability to use incandescent lamps in coal mines.

Of possibly as great importance there is a story of Crompton himself inspiring the young Sebastian de Ferranti whose influence in the British electrical engineering industry would exceed that of Crompton and I write of it in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. Whilst Crompton acknowledges his possible influence on Ferranti he spells out the fact that they were on different sides of The Battle of the Systems. I describe that in the USA between Edison and Westinghouse in the blog piece I referred to earler. In Britain it was in London that Ferranti championed high voltage AC current from his Deptford power station, whereas Crompton made money out of more local schemes using a lower voltage DC. Crompton were great adapters.

Cromptons moved to a much larger factory in 1896 whose vast assembly bays enabled the company to build the big generators, transformers and switchgear needed by the new national grid in the twenties. After a period of investment by Armstrong Siddeley, Crompton merged with Parkinson of Leeds to become Crompton Parkinson which would later join their earlier rival Brush becoming part of Hawker Siddeley.

Of interest to me but perhaps less so to Chelmsford, Colonel Crompton was a champion of motorised transport for the army, first in India but then in the First World War. Crompton tells in his Reminiscences his role in the development of the tank. I wrote about the development of the tank in Ordnance but omitted a reference to Crompton in connection with the smaller, faster Whippet. As with so many inventions, there were many hands and brains involved.

The Marriage family had been millers in and around Chelmsford for many years, and in 1898 took the plunge into the twentieth century by building Chelmer Steam Mill with modern rollers rather than millstones.

Ernst Gustav Hoffmann's invention of an automatic lathe for making ball bearings was sufficient incentive for the building, also in 1898, of the Hoffmann Works for the production of ball bearings. In 1970, Hoffmann merged with Ransomes and Marles Bearing Co, a Newark business with a connection with the Ransomes of Ipswich, and the Pollard Ball and Roller Bearing Co of Ferrybridge in West Yorkshire to form RHP plc in Newark on the River Trent in Nottinghamshire.

Guglielmo Marconi at the age of 22, again in 1898, set up in a former mill in Chelmsford the first wireless factory in the world. The mill had worked with silk but closed in 1863 when French imports flooded the market. The mill was revived briefly by Samuel Courtauld of nearby Braintree. For Marconi the beginning was all about wireless communication with ships but it grew to become serious competition to the cable operators. In 1901, he famously transmitted a signal from Poldhu in Cornwall to Signal Hill in Newfoundland. I noted elsewhere that the electricity powering the signal was generated by a Hornsby engine. Marconi developed radio transmission and after the First World War would transmit programmes from Chelmsford to the small number of radio enthusiasts. The formation of the BBC by a group of radio manufacturers including Marconi in 1922 would accelerate the growth of broadcast radio in Britain.

The next Marconi connection with Chelmsford was radar where it manufactured many sets and components before, during and after the Second World War. Related to radar was television and it was the Marconi-EMI system that was adopted by the BBC and subsequent commercial channels. A research facility was built at Great Baddow on the outskirts of the town. The company designed and built studio and broadcast equipment in its New Street factory. The adjacent factory was built for the production magnetrons for radar and after the war was occupied by the English Electric Valve company manufacturing a whole range of electronic tubes. I write at greater length about Marconi and broadcasting in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines.

In the postwar era, Marconi became part of English Electric and expanded in aeronautical, marine and broadcasting. English Electric became part of GEC on the breakup of which the Marconi defence business joined with British Aerospace to become BAE Systems which still have a research facility at Great Baddow.

Away from electronics, Britvic opened a new factory in 1955 but moved its headquarters to Hemel Hempstead in 2012 and closed the Chelmsford factory.

The Chelmsford Industrial Trail includes a description of what happened to some of the factories mentioned. Marconi International Marine became a car showroom and Britvic a retail park. The new Marconi factory became a Homebase DIY store. This is a pattern seen in most former industrial towns. We know from the statistics that manufacturing has reduced in size, these specifics bring this home. It is of course brought home much more starkly to those many thousands of men and women who saw their jobs disappear.

Further reading

• W.J. Baker, A History of the Marconi Company (London: Methuen, 1970).
• Stanley Wood, Chelmsford Industrial Trail updated by Tony Crosby and Dave Buckley (Essex Society for Archaeology and History, 1987, 2018)
• R.E. Crompton, Reminiscences (London: Constable & Co, 1928)