Coventry on the cusp of the twentieth century

Coventry was a city of engineering skills honed on watchmaking and it attracted first bicycle makers and then the first motor vehicle companies.

Two grandsons of the pioneer machine tool maker Henry Maudslay set up in the city: Cyril Maudslay with the Maudslay Motor Company which later joined with AEC and Reginald Maudslay with his Standard Motor company which later joined with Triumph. By then Maudslay Sons & Field was ending its life having moved from machine tools to marine engines both of which it had manufactured to great acclaim. London was a centre of engineering although much had gravitated to Manchester with the demands of an increasingly mechanised textile industry. London also had a long history of shipbuilding hence the direction of Maudslay's move away from machine tools.

Another major London manufacturer of marine engines was John Penn which company attracted a young William Hillman as an apprentice. Hillman moved back to his native Leicester where he went into partnership with William Herbert making first sewings machines and then bicycles as the Premier Company. William Herbert's younger brother was Alfred who, following an apprenticeship with Jessop in Leicester, set up in partnership before moving to Coventry as managing director of a new machine tool company, Alfred Herbert Ltd, with William Herbert as chairman.

I tell in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World how other subsequently great names gathered in Coventry: Harry Lawson, Louis Coatelin, Thomas Humber and well as William Hillman and the Maudslays. The boom in bicycles attracted American tool makers which scooped the market. Coventry was thus the obvious place for a rebirth of the British machine tool industry and Alfred Herbert was ready to lead the charge. I tell Herbert's subsequent story in Vehicles to Vaccines.

In the first part of the twentieth century, Alfred Herbert steadily built his business on the back of bicycles but when war broke out Herberts like all machine tool makers around the country faced massive demands. I wrote in my book Ordnance how Alfred Herbert was one of the industrialists - the men of push and go - who stepped forward to help Lloyd George in the war effort, in Herbert's case as Director of Machine Tools. I also wrote in Ordnance of the challenges facing manufacturing in terms of the loss of skilled men to the army. Unskilled men and women were brought into the factories and trained in specific tasks. Management then had the challenge of organising the flow of work in a way that it could be done satisfactorily with these more basic skill levels. They did not always succeed as evidenced by the number of 'duds' amongst shells supplied to the western front. Companies did go to extraordinary efforts to meet the challenge, but in the end the gap between supply and demand was met by imports from the USA. A huge quantity of armaments were imported and so these machine tools merely added to the list. It would however give the Americans a further foothold in British markets.

For Herberts and Coventry, the end of the war meant first a frenzy of activity but then the reality sunk in. The industry had grown to meet war demand and now had to shrink back to peacetime levels. Yet the world was changing and manufacturers sought different and more economical ways of doing things; the tried and tested no longer worked. For Herberts the challenge was to decide which machines to produce and how much to invest in new designs. In their book Alfred Herbert and the British Machine Tool Industry, Roger Lloyd-Jones and M.J. Lewis suggest that Sir Alfred found it hard to set a clear direction. There was also the issue of factored machines, which I discuss in Vehicles to Vaccines, which gave Herberts the option to source the more advanced machinery from third parties and so avoid both the cost of investment and the risk of failure.

You can read a fuller account of Coventry manufacturing by following this link and something on the earlier history of machine tools in this link.

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.