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)

Edward, Tom and Albert, and Douglas Vickers - three generations of steel makers

 By the mid eighteenth century members of the Vickers family were in business at Mill Sands, Sheffield as millers. With the growth of steel, William Vickers moved to a rolling mill business nearby and entered into a partnership which would become in 1828 Naylor, Hutchinson, Vickers & Company. William's interests turned towards the Sheffield and Rotherham Railway and its was Edward who moved from the mill business to take the lead at the Mill Sands Engineering Works.

Edward married Ann Naylor and they had four sons two of whom, Tom and Albert, were sent to Germany to receive a technical education. It was not long before the company became, simply, Vickers.

Edward was ambitious for himself and his family, but also for Sheffield, which at that time, ‘as a borough was still young, having been incorporated in 1843. Its centre lacked the dignified buildings, the wealthy shops, the well-laid streets which were even then to be found in the centres of the largest industrial cities as well as in the older communities.’ Edward became a Councillor and then, in 1846, an Alderman. All the time his business was growing and becoming very profitable. Part of the reason for this profitability was the export trade with America, where Vickers had appointed a German, Ernst Benzon, as their agent; he later became a partner.

Vickers had grown out of the Mill Sands Works and had begun work on what would become the River Don Works, with technical innovation introduced by Tom Vickers who was emerging as the technical partner. It was Albert who had the entrepreneurial flair.

I tell in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World of the growth of the company and how the expansion of Britain's railways would consume Vickers production for much the mid nineteenth century, but then the American railways would take over until men like Carnegie began the American steel industry. Demand for armaments succeeded those for railways and it was Albert who drew Vickers towards The Naval Construction and Armaments Company at Barrow, Nordenfelt and submarines and Maxim and machine guns.

The truth is that Vickers, one way or another, formed the backbone to much of our heavy manufacturing. They made steel. They were armourers to the nation. They financed Beardmore's massive shipyard on the Clyde.They built ships, but then aircraft and submarines. They built railways locomotives and a tracked competitor to Caterpillar. But so much else. They were part founders of International Computers, the British answer to IBM. They made concrete making machinery and equipment for breweries. They made printing machinery and office equipment including duplicators.

In terms of the Vickers family, Edward was the miller who grasped opportunity. He married into the Naylor family which was already financially secure. With Ann, he had four sons two of whom I have mentioned and for whom he used international connection to secure technical education in Germany. Tom was the engineer or more probably the metallurgist who pushed the boundaries of steel making. Albert pushed the boundaries of relationships and secured the growth of the company into armaments. Both Tom and Albert were by all accounts good looking and easily adopted an aristocratic grace. Tom sent his son Douglas to Eton from where he entered the business on the technical side at the bottom. He gained expertise and experience but by the time to took the chair, the post First World War world was changing. This Vickers was embraced with open arms by the colourful entrepreneur Dudley Docker from which Metropolitan Vickers emerged. Vickers also embraced arch rivals Armstrong Whitworth.

The chair passed outside the Vickers family but a remarkable institution had been created.

I wrote about them in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World in chapters 5, 7, 12, 13 and 15 and in Vehicles to Vaccines in chapters 3, 6, 12, 14, 15, 16.

Further reading:

J.D. Scott, Vickers – A History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962)