Who else shaped the Manufacturing World - The American System of Manufacturing

 Continuing my quest to discover who else shaped the manufacturing world, not unreasonably, I turn to America. 

An entry in the Oxford reference book is clear that America had a system of manufacturing that put it well ahead of other manufacturing nations. An academic article is more cautious looking at the American manufacturing system in the context of four products: guns, wooden timepieces, watches and axes. The system, in short, was to have interchangeable parts which could be machine made in bulk and then put together in the final product, the key being that all this could be done by unskilled workers. The article highlights one drawback that more time is needed for adjustment as interchangeable parts in practice don’t fit perfectly. Nonetheless, there it seems is the ‘system’.

The story of American manufacturing picks up from the accounts of the early settlements where the imperative was to secure food and shelter. Rebecca Fraser’s account of the Mayflower Generation focuses on the struggles with ill-health and the uninviting natural environment; relations with the native population were then not hostile. In time hostility grew as the native Indians took exception to the approach of some settlers. A third imperative was thus security.

As population increased and the infrastructure of society developed, American found itself as an exporter of agricultural produce not least tobacco, sugar and cotton. Imports were of slaves for the plantations but also manufactured goods. These goods would include weapons, agricultural tools, clothing and basic objects for the home.

The war of independence drew a line in the sand as the newly free nation weened itself off dependence on the old colonial power. This didn’t happen overnight and indeed had probably started before independence as Americans would invite in particular textile and arms manufacturers to help them set up their own facilities. As would be the case so often in the way Britain shaped the manufacturing world, the young countries would create new factories with new machinery and so not be incumbered with earlier processes or machines.

This opportunity to start with a clean sheet of paper surely contributed the what became known as the American System of Manufacturing where identical parts would be produced using machines instead of the then traditional more labour intensive and skilled manual process. Another driver of this was the need to move a workforce from agriculture to manufacturing without the time consuming learning of manual skills. The nature of the American republic is important. Where we talk of agricultural workers, we often mean small holders; men and women who had fought their way into self-sufficiency. There would therefore not be many prepared to give that up for the sake of a job in a factory. Equally in the agrarian society there were not skilled mechanics.

One name stands out in addressing this challenge and that was Eli Whitney whose career began in the southern states where he invented the cotton gin to improve the processing of raw cotton. He then moved north and set up in gun making. In order to meet the volumes needed, tasks needed to be undertaken by machines operated by unskilled labour.

Inventions alone were not enough, the creation of the American arms and textile industries was enabled by government purchasing for the needs of the army and so creating a level of demand that justified mechanisation. The position of US Ordnance is interesting. There were two main arsenals in Springfield, Massachusetts, and in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. In time these were supplemented by private manufacturers, principally Winchester Repeating Arms Company and Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing both of which became successful leaders.

The evidence is that by 1851 the American system of manufacture was a known quantity as there is the story of Colt visiting the Great Exhibition and meeting a steam engine manufacturer, Richard Garrett, who was so impressed by Colt’s manufacturing methods that he built the first British factory geared to mass production, the Long Shop.

I can fast forward to the Second World War when Ford tried to make Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. These were handmade, but Ford needed to mass produce. Ford and Rolls-Royce engineers broke down the engine into parts and then into the engineering steps required to make those parts. These steps would be carried out on machines by largely unskilled workers many of whom were women new to the workplace.

Going back to the nineteenth century, America was becoming self-sufficient in manufacturing with one major exception. America, whilst rich in raw material, had only a very small capacity to produce iron and none really for steel, and it was steel that was needed not least for the massive project of connecting American by rail. This meant that not only England, but Germany and Belgium exported steel rails, tyres and other railway equipment including locomotives and rolling stock. I have written in HBSTMW how this export trade boosted British steel making and this was also the case with the German Krupp which I write about in a separate post. The story of the American steel industry is thus another strand which I will cover.

The image is of my mother and father together with the president of Chrysler at their WW2 tank factory which surely epitomised the American System of Manufacturing. You can read more of this by following this link.

Overseas exhibitors at the Great Exhibition

 Continuing my attempt to address the question of who else shaped the manufacturing world, I draw on a series of papers given to the Society of Arts in 1852 reflecting upon the Great Exhibition. One such had as its focus machines for working in metal and wood.

The author looks first at what I suspect was a bug bear, the gulf between scientific and practical men and the huge distrust each group had for the other. He then moves to machinery and looks first at early examples before focusing on clock making where he suggests some of the first machines were to be found.

In terms of shaping the manufacturing world, he sees a process of one idea leading on to the next, but, importantly, without national borders. So the British may come up with a new machine, for example for gear cutting, but then the French perhaps would improve on it. He explores wood working machines and again sees the interplay between artisans of different countries.

In relation to America he refers to all manner of contrivance used in workshops including first a foot-mortising machine for wood patented in 1827 by John McClintic of Pennsylvania. He then traces the machine to Liverpool and a patent for improvements granted in 1851. The point he makes is that invention is difficult, but is made much easier the more brains that are brought to bear on the problem. Collaboration is key and in this the Exhibition could offer a meeting place where inventors from different countries could see the fruits of each other’s labour.

Another paper had its focus on philosophical instruments, which was part of the section for which my great grandfather was responsible. The image, with kind permission of Weiss & Son for the post is a knife in the shape of a cross with 1851 blades made by Weiss for the exhibition.

The author lists some of the inventions that had by 1851 become almost commonplace: steam engines, the telegraph, photography and electromagnetism.  He then notes that in relation to agriculture each of chemistry, mechanics and astronomy have made their contribution. Once again he picks up the value of the interchange of ideas between countries.

The benefit of sharing ideas is brought into sharp relief in an encounter with a would be exhibitor who had spent years developing a particular machine only to be told that a number of similar machines had already accepted. He then offers a summary of the categories of instrument before looking in detail at astronomical instruments. He makes the point that would be exhibitors from overseas may have been put off by the risk of damage to their instrument in the course of travel to the exhibition. He then highlights two exceptions from Germany who instruments he praises highly.

Electromagnetism is his next focus beginning with Volta’s discovery in 1800 of voltaic electricity and then Oersted’s work in 1820 on the interaction of electricity and magnetism, from which the electric motor was conceived. We could add to this list of inventors, the English scientist Michael Faraday. The paper’s author instead takes his audience to the United States and a galvanic meter which enabled the measuring of longitude and then an electromagnetic clock.

Levelling and surveying instruments were exhibited by England, France and Belgium. Optical instruments ranged from microscopes to lighthouses. Thermometers were exhibited by the English Negretti and Zambra and the French Fastre. Photography originated in France and at the Exhibition was represented by Germany, Austria and England. Balances attracted a broader following with exhibits from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium , Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and the USA. Calculating machines bring in the name Babbage, but not as an exhibitor. The best instrument was Russian made by Staffel. The exhibition was ‘rich with electric telegraphs’, with the British Electric Telegraph Company’s instruments taking pride of place. Prussia exhibited through Siemens and Halske. Cooke and Wheatstone are praised for keeping the UK ahead in telegraph technology. He concludes his talk by lamenting the lack of reward for British scientists, despite which they labour on.

The presentation on large steam engines begins with a lament on the limitations of the exhibition space which restricted the size of machine which could be exhibited. The well known British names are mentioned first but then a Belgian, French and Dutch, the latter particularly for land drainage. Fire engines were exhibited by France and Canada as well as the UK. Railway locomotives were dominated by the famous British makers. There were then manufacturing machines with Oldham’s Hibbert & Platt textile machinery. France, Belgium and the USA exhibited machines for working with cotton. There is a note that a future exhibition was planned for India. Wool machinery came from Yorkshire but also from France which produced the medal winning Mercier and Company. The most frequently mentioned name was Jacquard and this apparatus was shown as attached to a number of weaving machines. The other French invention of the circular knitting machine for the making of stockings was highlighted as only then recently taking the place of frame-knitting and so saving many hours of work. The section ends with printing machines and a further mention of Applegarth’s advanced machine previously highlighted in Ward’s account of the exhibition.

My talk to the Leicester Historical Association on How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing world

I want this evening to talk about my quest to discover How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

My quest began in April 2014. I brought down from the loft two big box containing scrapbooks which my mum had compiled of my dad’s war. I had always known that they existed but small boys have little interest in scrap books. This time though I turned the pages and found myself speechless. My dad had headed up supply of army vehicles and weapons in WW2 and my mum had been his PA. The albums told an incredible story – the number of vehicles used by the army grew from 40,000 to 1.5 million. I researched and discovered that just about every British motor company had made not only vehicles but anything from tin hats to ammunition. It was a War on Wheels and that was the name of my first book published in 2016. 

This evening, instead of a power point, I thought I would use some of the books I drew on to illustrate the talk. This one is brazen publicity as is the next. I promise not all! After the talk I will post both the text and the bibliography on my blog https://britishmanufacturinghistory.uk/

But back to the quest. I had caught the bug: what had happened in the first world war? Just about every British engineering company put its shoulder to the war effort. That book was called Ordnance

Where had the companies come from and where did they go to?

To try to answer the first question I worked back and got to 1851 and the Great Exhibition in London’s Hyde Park. This as I’m sure you know was an adventurous idea by Prince Albert and Sir Henry Cole aided by others.  The organising committee included such grandees as William Cubitt the builder, Joseph Paxton who designed the massive crystal palace for the exhibition, Robert Stephenson the railway engineer and Charles Wentworth Dilke – editor of the Times. It was to be a ‘Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations. A great people inviting all civilised nations to a festival to bring into comparison the works of human skill.’

There were 100,000 exhibits from 14,000 individuals and companies from the United Kingdom and overseas, with some 60% from the home nations. The Crystal Palace covered some 900,000 square feet and welcomed six million visitors over that summer of 1851.

My great grandfather, Richard Williams, was manager of surgical instrument makers Weiss & Son at 62, The Strand just over the road from where he had been born half a century earlier. Richard had been secretary of the group of instrument makers responsible for their part of the exhibition. 

I found a copy of the full exhibition catalogue online and it read like a list of old friends – the names of companies known but some long forgotten. Ransome farm machinery, Gillow furniture, Savory and Moore medicines, Maudsely and Napier engineers, Butterley steel which incidentally had an underground wharf on the Cromford canal. Naysmith of the steam hammer fame. Elliott & Sons instruments. William Hollins who would later produce Viyella  and Samuel Courtauld.

I had to find where they had come from and where they went. Some of the names took me back to the start.

The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate . This was perhaps Britain in the late seventeenth century. Land owners were rich and the rest weren’t. I suggest that this conservative scene may have continued uninterrupted had it not been for the sea. The British couldn’t resist the temptation of taking to boats to see what was beyond the horizon. Having reached land, being British, the instinct then was to trade. It worked wonderfully, the wealthy landowners could use some of their wealth to buy the beautiful things that adventurers brought home. It wasn’t only beautiful things, it was exotic tastes like tea and sugar. It transformed the lives of the wealthy; the adventurers didn’t do too badly either; wealth began to leak into a small but growing part of the population: the merchant class; the nation of shopkeepers so derided by Napoleon.

The demand for shipping grew. Some forty years of research have been brought together in Anthony Slaven’s British Shipbuilding 1500-2010; 

Ship building, like wool, is fundamental to our island story. Slaven suggests that, all around our shores, there were many carpenters who turned their hand to the building of small boats. Their use was restricted to coastal waters, and, perhaps, as far as the Low Countries, France and possibly Portugal and the Mediterranean. Trade with the Far East was conducted overland, as evidenced by the Silk Road. The late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries saw the ‘great voyages of discovery’, and much longer voyages to the spice islands, Africa and China. This is subject explored extensively elsewhere and so I didn’t dwell on it in my book. 

With all this shipbuilding forests were being denuded at an alarming rate. Forests which were also a store of energy for heating and cooking as well as smelting ore to find metal from which all manner of device could be made. If wood or charcoal could no longer be used, what was the alternative.

Those canny Brits living in the north east already knew the answer, for they had been collecting seacoal, as opposed to charcoal, from beaches for centuries. What’s more, they found that if you scraped the surface you could find more seacoal underneath. It was filthy and gave off noxious fumes but it provided heat when heat was needed.

None of this story is strictly linear, but some things did follow as a consequence of others. 

Beautiful cloth was imported from India and this made sense because cotton grew there and they had been making it into wonderful garments for centuries. British textile merchants, who had for centuries run their supply chain of wool and flax spinners and weavers, recognised an opportunity. Why not let Lancashire spinners and weavers make the cloth from imported cotton? 

It was an opportunity not to be missed until Napoleon came along

British merchants had developed a nice little continental market for their cotton cloth. The Napoleonic wars scuppered that and prices collapsed. Somehow costs had to be reduced. There wasn’t enough scope in paying yet less to the weavers and spinners – who were becoming desperate

Something else was needed: mechanisation. 

The British had always been finding better ways of doing things. John Kay with his flying shuttle; James Hargreaves with the spinning jenny, Samuel Crompton’s mule and Richard Arkwrights mechanised factory. 

These machines demanded metal for their construction. 

Elsewhere in the forest, as they say, iron masters were finding better ways to produce metal and better metals in the form of brass and steel. All this demanded more coal and more coal demanded deeper mines. Deeper mines brought twin problems of flooding with water and foul air. Metal provided the solution in the hands of men like Newcomen, Blenkinsop and Hackworth, first with the atmospheric engine to pump the water to the surface. Ever ingenious, this water was then used to power waterwheels which, in turn, could power a lift to bring the hard won coal to the surface and onwards to the canal and the final customer. 

But back to the mill. All this mechanisation in textile manufacture was fine so long as you were near a fast flowing  river and could harness its power to drive waterwheels to work machines. What was needed was rotational power that did not need a fast flowing river and this brings us to Birmingham.

This is and was  a remarkable place. In the seventeenth and eighteen century it was a town of workshops. Accounts from the time tell of innumerable chimneys puffing out smoke as all manner of metal was worked into tools, weapons and toys – those items of delight that so thrilled the monied classes. The very special thing about Birmingham was that each workshop carried out a single process, with the item passed on to the neighbour for the next process and so on. It was classical division of labour, a production line, if you like. The other special thing about Birmingham was a man named Watt in partnership with Boulton. Watt did of course crack the problem of rotational motion powered by steam. 

Now there was no stopping this people.

Rotational motion powered by steam worked a dream in cotton mills, and the percentage of cotton clothing worn by the British and Europeans increased dramatically. 

It was itself a revolution but one not without its dark side as the cotton was grown by slaves and the working conditions in the mills and mines for men, women and children were appalling. This has been explored extensively elsewhere and although fundamental to the industrial revolution and indeed our history, I won’t talk more about it this evening. 

It is interesting to try to identify just what it was that drove the massive increase in cotton consumption. One school of thought puts it down to domestic demand; people wanted clothing they could wash. Or was it the export markets? I suspect a bit of both. But back to steam.

We had the factories, could steam also help the transport problem? Roads were dangerous and often potholed, Canals were great, but slow. In step  Trevithic, Stephenson and Isembard Kingdom Brunel and the railways beckoned.

The railway entrepreneurs like Thomas Brassey and George Hudson built a more densely populated rail system than was absolutely essential. Yet investors kept piling and an astonishing infrastructure resulted. Britain not only built railways in Britain but in France and elsewhere. We exported rails to the USA and indeed worldwide

Trains dramatically reduced travel times, but what if there was a quicker way to send a message?

Scientists on both sides of the Atlantic had long been experimenting with electricity, but in Britain it was Cooke and Wheatstone who demonstrated that a signal could be transmitted along a wire; some suggest before Morse. Soon telegraph wires extended beside railway lines cementing the connected country. 

Electrical wires needed insulation which was provided by a rubber type substance from southeast Asia called Gutta Percha, the main producer of which would become BTR, the company that bought Dunlop – that though is jumping ahead.

Britain wasn’t just a country, it was the heart of an empire extending across the globe. British ships sailed and steamed everywhere with iron and steel steadily taking the place of wood for ship construction. The Empire could be drawn ever closer with telegraph and this is where Siemens stepped in. This was the British Siemens led by William, later Sir William, as opposed to the German company bearing the same name, run by his brother. The British Siemens Brothers made cable by the mile at their Woolwich factory, later part of AEI and then GEC. Soon the empire was linked.

Yet, telegraph was to be a splash in the ocean as far as the use of electricity was concerned. We come across a man named Ferranti working in the Siemens laboratory. From there he went on to power generation and, in his early twenties, a phenomenally ambitious scheme to provide electricity for London from a new power station at Deptford.

Telegraph was great if you could run cables, but what about ships? Just think of the commercial advantage if ships could be contacted en-route. Here another man of Italian birth steps in. Marconi created a business enabling ships to communicate with land stations using radio. 

Time and again we might admit surprise at the names of those most influential in the story, for many were not ‘British’. The peoples of these islands welcomed and offered opportunity to men, for most were then men, who had been born elsewhere. Perhaps it was our openness to the world more than anything that resulted in our place in the world of manufacturing.

The manufacturing ecosystem screamed for yet more power. I turn first to two Britons – James Young who found a flammable liquid seeping out of coal seams down in the mines, and Joseph Ruston top of my list manufacturing heroes. 

Joseph Ruston was one of the founders of the Lincoln firm, Ruston and Hornsby. He was the complete businessman: innovative, a great salesman and financially astute. There is a delightful book One Hundred Years of Good company which tells the story of Rustons with a little fictional narrative alongside the harder history.

Well , this book tells a story of Ruston travelling to Russia to sell them steam pumps to drain the land ready to plant grain. Being an entrepreneur always with an eye to an opportunity, Ruston heard that a man nearby wanted to pump oil out of the ground and what better than a Rustons pump. That man’s mainstream business was trading in shells – it did of course become the massive Shell Oil Company.

The Rustons book suggests that Ruston and Hornsby can lay claim to the first ‘diesel’ engine – indeed before diesel. These spread around the globe frequently for electricity generation as in lighthouses and indeed the statue of liberty.

In any sane world British engineers would have developed the internal combustion engine to add power to carriages.  Instead the island was plagued by rich idiots recklessly driving steam powered vehicles on the roads. Government stepped in to limit speeds with the Red Flag. This gave the French and Germans time to take the lead in inventing the motor car. As is often the case the British did rather well following the footsteps of others. Harry Lawson bought the Daimler patents and created the first British motor factory in an old cotton mill in Coventry. 

Others quickly followed. 

The route to the motor car derives quite possibly from the sewing machine. This piece of apparatus evolved over a period with input again on both sides of the Atlantic, eventually taking shape under patents taken out by the America Singer. 

A word about patents. It would be remiss not to acknowledge the role played by William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth I trusted advisor. He masterminded British patent law which provided protection to those who wished to exploit their inventions here. Many chose Britain in preference to their native land for this reason.

Those working with sewing machines used their new found knowledge to branch out into bicycles and here names like Humber, Hillman Singer and Starley emerge. From bicycles came motor bikes and then motor cars.

For the motor car, alongside Lawson and Daimler, I might place Lanchester very much not an entrepreneur and definitely not a business administrator but a brilliant engineer. He built the first vehicle that was not simply a horseless carriage. Harry Ricardo, who himself designed the engine for the tank, said of the Lanchester that he could vouch for their ‘quietness, lack of vibration and smooth ride.’

The name Harry Lawson brings in those of other entrepreneurs who sailed near to and sometimes over the line. Ernest Terah Hooley was one such described by the Economist as the Napoleon of finance. 

Cars needed tyres and in steps John Dunlop with his tyre for bicycles. It wasn’t Dunlop though who drove the business from Ireland onto the world stage and motor cars. It was the du Cros family and Hooley; and much later Eric Geddes. It was Hooley who launched Dunlop as a public company, making millions as a result. He went on to build the Trafford Park industrial estate in Manchester.

Cars also needed lights and other electrical equipment and in steps Joseph Lucas, first with lights for bicycles but then for cars

But also engineers like Humber and Hillman, designers like Louis Coatalen.

There were many others. Morris in Oxford. Austin who started out in Wolseley making sheep shearing equipment. Wolseley later became part of Vickers of which more later. There were also Rolls-Royce and WO Bentley of course. 

If internal combustion engines could be used to power transport on land, why not ships and why not in the air; indeed why not on rail? Once again the British weren’t first but they prospered in the slip stream.

In relation to ships, the invention by Newcastle man CA Parsons of the steam turbine may have delayed the move by British shipbuilders to internal combustion. Steam turbine ships were very good.

Genius with steam also encouraged the British to stay with coal powered railway locomotives – after all with the Flying Scotsman and the Mallard, it was a remarkable industry.

Clearly the same wasn’t true of aircraft and in the years before the First World War we began to see those much loved icons: de Havilland, Hadley Page, AV Roe, Sopwith and Hawker.

Tragically and ironically, war played a huge part in the history of British manufacturing. Aside from the loss of young lives, the drain on the exchequer especially after the second world war placed great pressure on the governments that spurred the export drive in its wake. 

Looking at war driven technological advances, the Crimean war inspired William Armstrong to invent the rifled barrel for big guns, vastly improving their accuracy, and encouraging advances in metallurgy. Armstrong would join with Whitworth and then Vickers. 

Advances in medicine are well known. War also inspired Donkin to develop the tin can for preserving food especially for the Navy. Napoleon could claim the initial credit since he had sponsored a competition to produce a means of storage of meat for his sailors. The competition was won by a glass container; Donkin’s metal one worked rather better in practice.

The Boer war developed the use of telegraph transforming the way infantry and cavalry worked together.

The First World War had a massive influence. At the start, the War Office had specified Bosch magnetos for all war office vehicles. In stepped Peter Bennett of Thomson Bennett which were the only UK manufacturer of such parts. Lucas spotted an opportunity and bought the company, massively increasing its production. Almost as important, Bennett would go on to run Lucas in the interwar years with great success. 

Inevitably expertise with explosives grew with people like Nobel and Abel. A whole string of munitions factories were created. Heavy engineering flexed its muscles with companies like Vickers, John Brown, Cammell Laird and Beardmore. The young motor industry stepped up with large numbers of lorries, motor bikes and cars. Textile manufacturers churned out tons of uniforms. 

Lincoln’s William Tritton invented the tank, made by manufacturers across the land. In truth under the inspiration of Lloyd George the whole national industry went to war. 

I spotted a toy tank in a national trust house we visited a couple of years ago. It has a strong message about toys which were barely visible in any quantity before the twentieth century. There may have been a horse tricycle from G&J Lines, but more likely a wooden toy bought from a street trader. After 1900, they may have had a Mechanics Made Easy set and accompanying instruction manual. Frank Hornby, a Liverpool office worker, had been making perforated metal strips for his sons. These could be connected by means of small bolts and nuts to make anything from model trains to bridges and cranes. The adoption of the name Meccano came in 1907. 

Harbutt’s Plasticine was first manufactured in 1900. For wealthier families, the main source of toys was Germany with manufacturers such as Steiffe for Teddy Bears and Marklin for tinplate. The British firm Bassett-Lowke designed and supplied clockwork trains, but often had them manufactured in Germany. Between the wars, the absence of German suppliers boosted British toy makers into world leadership

Telegraph and telephone were used by the country mile but also radio especially for contact between the ground and aircraft overhead. 

The interwar years witnessed change on a grand scale.

At first there was a short post war boom but then old industries suffered as former customer nations found they could make it themselves – so textiles and shipping. Then the massive infrastructure of war production had  to be redeployed. Shipyard owners rationed themselves to share out the reduced volume of work. Thousands of skills workers were laid off. The consumption of whisky fell and producers such as the Distillers Company sought new uses for their plant – industrial alcohol made from molasses was one answer.

New industries prospered. The chemicals giant ICI was created in 1926 and would fund research which would, within a decade, lead to the invention of polythene and Perspex, using that industrial alcohol. Courtaulds took a licence for the production of rayon from vegetable material and soon transformed the dress of the British from cotton and wool to rayon – once again historic skills of spinning and weaving came in. The Celanese company of Derby took this further by using chemicals derived from cracking oil. 

I don’t know whether magnificent head offices were a hint of something to come.

Elsewhere Lever Brothers were making more than soap, Burroughs Welcome were developing medicines although Glaxo still focused on baby milk – how it would change!

English Electric and Associated Electrical Industries were both products of the interwar years. It is interesting though that these giant electric companies owe their childhood years to America.

Motor cars went from strength to strength

 Radio thrived, once businesses realised they could make money out of it. The BBC was formed by radio manufacturers in the 1923. To begin with the number of amateur licences far exceeded those who simply wanted to listen. A great many of the early radios were home made, but then we have names like Ekco and Pye. Gramophone recording kept pace with radio but television would follow later. There were British fingers in each of the pies.

In the mid-thirties, rearmament saved shipping, but also aircraft. Companies such as Avro, Supermarine, de Havilland, Vickers and Shorts were busy again.

There is a case for saying that the Second World War lasted for ten years for British manufacturers. It produced an astonishing set of advances. 

Motor manufacturers stepped up to the mark even more, producing everything from tanks, tin hats and ammunition to vehicles of all kinds – they made aircraft in the shadow factories built in the thirties in anticipation of war. Out of aircraft production came the jet, brain child of Frank Whittle which took to the air in the Meteor.

Radio manufacturers produced thousands of sets for all three services; they developed and manufactured radar and many other devices not least the Collosus computer that cracked the enigma code.

The potential of nuclear power was explored by ICI and others. Interestingly Frank Kierton, who went on to run Courtaulds, was part of the ICI team. Nylon, based on chemicals derived from oil was invented. British Nylon Spinners, owned jointly by ICI and Courtaulds, exploited the American invention. Glaxo and Wellcome produced penicillin initially using a natural fermentation. It would not be long before penicillin was joined by pharmaceuticals also derived from oil. 

Aluminium, which had been produced in the UK since the late 19th c, had been used by the ton in aircraft manufacture and would go on to be used in London’s tube trains.

Post war, there was no respite. Exports were needed in unimagined quantities to balance the nation’s books. It was tough on an exhausted population for rationing became ever fiercer. For exports, plastics mushroomed as more oil was refined to meet demand. Polythene began to be seen in the home. Giant chemical works appeared. What might be termed the gluttony of hydrocarbons got under way.

The motor industry yet again came into its own. The problem was how to meet the pent up demand. The American market was hungry for Jaguars, Austin Healey and MG and the Sunbeam Talbot. This strong demand laid the foundations of troubles to come as demands for higher wages were accepted just to keep production moving. Coventry was a busy place. Steel works struggled to keep pace. Shipyards were rationing orders to cope with demand. Again storing up problems for the future. The absence of competition meant that technical advance was slow or not existent. Old work practices were re-embraced. 

A man named Bamford made his first excavator from a converted tractor. 

The Vickers Viscount and de Havilland Comet took to the air

The jet engine powering  aircraft also found spectacular use as gas turbines powering the new oil industry. I was privileged to meet Kelvin Bray, managing director of Ruston Gas Turbines for twenty five years and he told me how the team in Lincoln, working under a watchful eye from Frank Whittle, developed the gas turbine with encouragement from Arnold Weinstock of Ruston’s then owner, GEC.

Rustons gas turbines were used by 80% of the world’s oil industry

The post war era saw Brush at the Falcon Works in Loughborough manufacture generators, transformers and railway locomotives. Brush later became part of Hawker Siddeley.

Rolls-Royce at Derby had powered so many aircraft with the iconic Merlin engine amongst others. Their motor cars transported royalty. The post war era saw wonderful motor cars but also Rolls-Royce jet engines and work on nuclear power for submarines.

This part of my story ends with the Festival of Britain, an occasion of great hope for the future. For my book it forms a bookend to mirror that of the Great Exhibition. 

The Festival itself was to be unlike the Great Exhibition; in the words of the Festival director:

We were going to tell a story not industry by industry, still less firm by firm, but the consecutive story of the British people in the land they live in. Each type of manufacture and each individual exhibit would occur in the setting appropriate to that part of the story in which it naturally fell e.g. steel knives and sinks in the home part of the story, steel machines in the industry part of the story, steel chassis in transport, and so on.

Exhibits were chosen as products of good design, functional efficiency and manufacture. We had moved on to a world of design and people like Robin Day with his iconic plastic chairs.

I found surprising the emphasis given to the manufacture of textiles. Perhaps I shouldn’t have, given the importance of textiles to the whole industrialisation process. In 1914 it was said that Britain produced enough cloth to clothe half the world’s population.  In 1951, the future of textiles was considered strong – they were to lead the export drive. How things have changed. 

There was an emphasis on new materials: aluminium, fibreglass and all manner of rubber highlighted by Dunlop. There was a focus on what we now call green energy: nuclear and hydroelectric.

A Design Review was compiled of some 24,000 products chosen for good design, functional efficiency and manufacture. It was to be a showcase for the nation. It also provides the spring board for my current book, Vehicles to Vaccines, which explores what happened next. Contrary to popular opinion it is not all doom and gloom, British manufacturing, although employing many fewer people, may well be approaching another golden era.

Talk to Leicester branch of the Historical Association

 Delighted to have been invited to do a virtual talk about How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. 

I have dispensed with PowerPoint and will talk with reference to my secondary sources - the book was written in lockdown, although I did have some earlier research of primary sources. 

I plan to post the text of my talk and a list of the books after the talk 

Vehicles to Vaccines - a working draft

 This week I have been editing the draft of my next book Vehicles to Vaccines exploring the #ukmfg story from 1951. I have also received a draft contract from a publisher. So onward I go!

Jaguar and Land Rover - odd bedfellows?

William Lyons and the Wilks brothers created remarkable companies which made iconic vehicles. Was it just fate that brought the companies together?

The route to the first ‘marriage’ was circuitous.

In the fifties, William Lyons and Jaguar were doing well, producing cars much in demand and they had virtually doubled in size by buying Daimler, but also Coventry Climax and Guy Motors. To be honest this was a pretty rich mix. It therefore still strikes me as strange that Lyons would enter into merger discussions with George Harriman at BMC. Yet, we have to remember the times  –  when BMC’s Mini was the must have vehicle for swinging sixties. BMC also owned MG and Austin-Healey whose sports cars were much in demand.  It seems that Lyons saw BMC as having the weight to finance the development of the Jaguar models which he had at least in his mind if not on the drawing board. Jaguar merged with BMC to become British Motor Holdings in 1966.

The Wilks brothers had retired from Rover in the early sixties and Donald Stokes of Leyland viewed the company as offering a slice of motoring quality to the bus and truck company which he ran. Rover would join Triumph which had become part of Leyland with the Standard-Triumph acquisition in 1960.

The mid sixties saw BMH running into trouble. The answer in the eyes of the new Labour government was size and this would be provided by the charismatic Donald Stokes and Leyland. The merger took place in 1968.

The new group had riches beyond price in terms of wonderful motor cars. The Jaguar E-type and XJ6, the Rover P6, the Triumph 2000 not to mention the MGB and Triumph TR5. It also had a vehicle originally made for farmers from aluminium left over from aircraft production – the Land Rover. Rather more ominously it had a large number of old factories, dominant shop stewards and mass market motor cars that the public didn’t really want.

I explore what became the British Leyland story in my next book, Vehicles to Vaccines.

For this blog I note just three events that ensured that Jaguar and Land Rover would survive.

The rationalisation of BL could so easily have led to the loss of the Land Rover; instead the factory at Solihull was made over to 4x4 production. The Range Rover had been introduced at the end of the sixties just as BL was running out of money. The car was perfectly timed and demand soon far exceeded supply.

A little later, a brilliant manager, Geoffrey Robinson, was appointed Managing Director of Jaguar. He had no intention of the marque losing it kudos and initiated an ambitious plan to bring the company back on track. A lack of money caused this plan to run into the buffers. The appointment of Michael Edwards to lead to the eventual breakup of British Leyland had for Jaguar a streak of brilliance for he appointed John Egan to take up the reins at the then floundering motor company. Egan and his team brought Jaguar back so much so that, following privatisation, Ford paid handsomely for what was to lead their new speciality car group.

British Leyland became the Rover Group and this was bought by BMW. They in turn sold Land Rover to Ford where it worked closely with Jaguar.

The rest as they say is history, Jaguar and Land Rover both now prosper as JLR as part of the Tata Group.

It is ironic that the Wilks family didn’t see the Land Rover as their great success; it was the experimental vehicle powered by a gas turbine – Rover had after all been part of the development of the jet engine. Had this been the case, Jaguar and Rover would have been head to head. Had Land Rover stuck to the utility vehicle so loved by explorers, Ford may well not have looked at them. Yet with the Range Rover successors, Land Rover and Jaguar together look to the luxury car market where they both can prosper.

The ashtray belonged to my Dad who owned one of the first SS cars to carry the name Jaguar  

 

Lucas - King of the Air

Lucas occupied a special place in the aircraft industry supplying electrical systems for aircraft.

The number of aircraft manufactured in the UK before and during WW2 was enormous and under continuous development, and so Lucas engineers were busy not only manufacturing but researching and designing new products. For example, some 200,000 Rotax magnetos had been supplied for Rolls-Royce Merlins.

After the war, they designed brand new magnetos for Rolls-Royce Griffins for Avro Shackletons and also for Bristol Hercules 730s. With the coming of the V bombers, Rotax supplied complete electrical systems for the Vickers Valiant. The Vulcan and Victor also had significant input from Rotax. This work flowed into a contract to equip the Rolls-Royce Dart for the Vickers Viscount; they also equipped the Bristol Britannia, de Havilland Comet and Hawker Hunter.

The increasing complexity of aircraft and the associated demand on the electrical supply partly wrong footed Rotax allowing English Electric, which had taken a license to manufacture Sundstrand constant speed drives for aircraft generators, a foothold in the supply chain.

As Gas Turbine engines became ever more powerful, the issue of the ignition unit became ever more contentious. This allowed Plessey and BTH another toehold. Lucas was never a company to be beaten for long, and it was Lucas that developed the electronics for the Rolls-Royce Avon.

Eric Earnshaw had been a driving force at Rotax and had begun a policy of diversification when he saw the market under pressure. One was the solid-rotor alternator developed for aircraft but also employed to advantage in the Chieftain tank. Another was the heat pump – many years before its time. Earnshaw’s focus and energy ensured that Lucas was at the head of the pack with aero-engine technology.

With the purchase of Bristol Siddeley by Rolls-Royce, he saw the need to combine component suppliers and went about a programme of purchases devoting much money, time and effort to support Rolls-Royce with the development of the RB211. This could so easily have been disastrous when Rolls ran out of money. The Lucas position was saved by the nationalisation of their customer and their work continued.

The focus of Lucas work in aviation was sharpened further by its renaming as Lucas Aerospace. Lucas Aerospace worked on the re-heat system to provide bursts in increased power for the Phantom. They also developed digital fuel control for jets which by their nature experiences extreme conditions. Little of this work was done in isolation. Lucas worked with Rolls-Royce but also with Bosch and computer manufacturers Marconi-Elliott.

Image with thanks to the British Motor Archive

 I write more in my forthcoming book, Vehicles to Vaccines.

Lucas - King of the Road

 Lucas were the backbone of the British motor industry right from the start.

The three generations of the Lucas family strongly supported by non-family chairmen including Peter Bennett and Bernard Scott led the way in technical innovation, manufacturing efficiency and marketing. It was not by accident that they supplied nearly three of the British market and a good proportion of those in countries developing their indigenous motor industry.

They began with bicycle lamps. Harry, son of Joseph, joined the business with the firm belief that quality was vital, that orders should only be accepted if they could be delivered, and that price mattered. With the coming of motor cars, Harry Lucas was quick to see the opportunities to move into lighting and starting motor cars.

With the coming of the First World War, Harry Lucas was keen to provide motor companies with what they needed for the war effort. A major problem was that the War Office had specified Bosch Magnetos for their vehicles. The components industry pre-war had been content with this, and the ability of British companies to supply magnetos was strictly limited. One company in particular, Thomson Bennett, rose to the challenged. Harry Lucas pounced when, in 1914, the opportunity arose to purchase it. This was going to prove of massive value to Lucas in the years to come, not least in the person of Peter Bennett. During the war, Lucas grew to some 4,000 employees, 1,200 of whom were making magnetos.

After the war, Lucas were growing their business in a number of very focused ways. They accepted offers by the smaller component manufacturers to buy their businesses, and then, a little later, agreed to buy their two larger competitors, Rotax and CAV when the latter experienced harsh trading conditions in the mid 1920s. Lucas was able to do this because they had always pursued conservative financial policies, and so were able both to weather storms, but also take advantage of the weakness of others.

Lucas men volunteered for service in the Second World War to such an extent that men joked of the Lucas Light Infantry, as they also joked about the Rootes Rifles.

I will write in my next post about Lucas in the air.

You can read more about my take on the story of UK manufacturing on this blog and my exploration of the supply to the British Army by following this link.

Image with thanks to the British Motor archive

 I write more in my forthcoming book, Vehicles to Vaccines.

Winners and losers since 1951 - Rolls-Royce and Bentley

Reviewing the draft of my next book, working title 'Vehicles to Vaccines', some companies jump out as conspicuous success stories, and some less so. Beneath the surface there are many hundreds of smaller British manufacturing concerns which form the backbone of this sector.

In a sequence of forthcoming posts, I plan to tell some of the stories.

Sales of British companies is a recurring theme and there are a number of ways of viewing this. It creates shareholder value. It offers a way for overseas companies to benefit from UK manufacturing expertise. Yet, it saddens me. Am I being too emotional? More seriously, should I be concerned?

In the case of four of our top motor companies, I believe the answer to both is yes. Let's take the example of Rolls-Royce and Bentley. I shall look at Jaguar and Land Rover in a subsequent post.

The story is well known, but can be clouded by the mists of time. Henry Royce was a superbly talented engineer and, following the untimely death of his partner Charles Rolls, formed a team around him to complement his skills by adding imaginative marketing. Claude Johnson and Ernest Hives are names that stand out. Johnson’s view was that the company should build on its reputation of serving the aristocracy whose cars were nearly always driven by chauffeurs. Thus, if a customer wished to test drive a car, he would be driven by a Rolls-Royce chauffeur who had been schooled in the etiquette of service. Royce demanded the highest possible standards in engineering, as Johnson did in customer service.

W.O. Bentley was probably as great an engineer. At the start of the First World War, he worked for engine builder Gwynne who were not convinced by Bentley’s suggestion of aluminium pistons. Humber harboured no such doubts and, with him, built many engines this way. In 1920 W.O, as he was known, formed Bentley Motors. The Autocar magazine reported that he was working on a model ‘intended to appeal to those enthusiastic motorists who desire a car which, practically speaking, was a true racing car with touring accessories’. Only three years later, the car finished fourth in the Le Mans. It was the Wall Street crash that robbed Bentley of his company, and Rolls-Royce pipped at the post Napier & Sons to buy the valuable marque.

Rolls-Royce built both cars from their factory at Sinfin Lane in Derby alongside aeroengines.

When I say they built cars, I do mean that they produced the chassis with engine ready for a specialist coach builder to add the coachwork to meet the customers’ requirements.

During the Second World War, the production of aeroengines was vast and critical to the war effort. Cars were also produced as witnessed by the Rolls-Royce used by Field Marshall Montgomery (in the photograph).

Following the war, Rolls-Royce moved the production of cars to the shadow factory they had managed in Crewe, leaving aeroengines at Derby.

W.O. found he could no longer work with Rolls-Royce and so joined Lagonda which later teamed up with Aston-Martin under the ownership of David Brown. As I will tell in a later posts, they too enjoyed success at Le Mans.

In the fifties and sixties, Rolls-Royce produced some truly iconic cars, not least the Phantom IV, available only to royalty and heads of state.

Rolls-Royce underwent a dramatic change when the development costs of the RB211 aeroengine ran out of control, leading to the placing of the aeroengine company into public ownership. Rolls-Royce Motors was separately floated in 1973, which coincided with the launch of the Corniche, the fastest Rolls-Royce ever.

Rolls-Royce Motors was  bought by Vickers plc in 1980. They had been faced with the capital cost of tooling for new models; Vickers, on the other hand, expected a windfall from the nationalisation of their aircraft and shipbuilding businesses. Vickers worked hard to make the combination work, producing motor cars that the wealthy of the world wanted to buy, under both the Rolls-Royce and Bentley marques. In time, Vickers had to seek partners for Rolls-Royce to develop the next new model. The seeking evolved into a potential sale with BMW as front runners. BMW were already supplying engines for both Rolls-Royce and Bentley models; they also enjoyed success with joint ventures with the aeroengine company, Rolls-Royce plc, which had been privatised in 1987.

In the event, VW outbid BMW. As was widely reported at the time, VW found that they had bought the company without the right to use the brand which still belonged to Rolls-Royce plc. Undaunted, they set about building Bentleys at Crewe. BMW acquired the licence to use  the Rolls-Royce brand and set up a new factory on the Goodwood Estate in Sussex. 

The net result of all this is a duo of fully financed and commercially supported companies building distinct Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars in England. So, possibly not a cause for sadness.

Is it a cause for concern? Has this been an isolated incident the answer may well be no. As it is, these were just two of a long line of sales which neither the government nor the city did a thing to stop.