A review from a second year degree student

This review is by Coffee and Books and makes everything worthwhile.

I wanted to read How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World by Philip Hamlyn Williams because I studied economic history last year and I liked the subject a lot. On top of that the author’s great grandfather exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851. That made the book too enticing to miss and I’m glad I didn’t because it’s great.

The book covers the period from 1850 to 1950, the last chapter being on the Festival of Britain of 1951. It’s a wonderfully circular structure, to start with the Great Exhibition and finish with the Festival of Britain. With wars, including both world wars, and disruption to supply chains, advances in technology, changes in manufacturing, this book had to cover a lot of information and it does it beautifully. It’s easy to read, explained clearly and engaging.

Many topics are covered, from steam power which was still in its infancy in the 1850s to the Mallard of the 1930s, covered developments in communication, the sewing machine, bicycles, cars and aeroplanes. He covers the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, which were interesting to read about. Germany had a leading role when it came to dyestuff, but the war changed that, of course.

This is a very good book, one I would recommend to anyone, without any doubt

A review from Lincoln, the city where so much manufacturing happened

 ‘Philip’s painstaking research leads to a fascinating read’

Thank you Rob White in the Lincoln Independent for a wonderfully affirming review of How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

I am really pleased you found the book an easy read, notwithstanding the extensive research. Pleased, too, you liked the quotes I used for each chapter.

How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World is on sale at Lindum Books in Bailgate, and from the publishers Pen & Sword.

 

Fossil fuels powered the industrial revolution, but that is not the whole story.

 At the start, power came from water, wood and charcoal and animals. Early experiments with coal were not entirely successful. Impurities made it unsuitable for smelting, it was also polluting such that the burning of coal was banned in the city of London. 

Yet coal was freely available, often on the surface by the coast of north east England - hence its full name sea-coal as opposed to char-coal. It was the demand for wood for the making of ships that forced a second look at coal. 

Impurities were addressed by burning them off into the atmosphere; later they were captured and uses found for early plastics for example. Coal now drove the smelting of iron. An early use for coal was in the coal mines, to power steam engines to extract water and drive ventilation as well as powering engines to bring coal to the surface and onward to the user. 

The railways provided the perfect use for coal as new lines connected the country. Coal powered ships connecting the world. 

Oil was first discovered in Britain in coal  seams and used for lighting and lubrication. The big oil finds were in the USA and Russia. It was only later that the Middle East took it place in energy supply. 

In looking at British manufacturing, coal remained king much longer than elsewhere. British shipbuilders and railway locomotive manufacturers stayed with coal probably far too long. The famous red flag which slowed the British car industry was initially to protect people from coal powered steam vehicles.

 It is interesting that one of Britain’s greatest engineers, William Armstrong, was wedded to the power of water. Water also powered the aluminium industry with the early hydroelectric schemes.

Hydrocarbons are part and parcel. In Britain the first plastics were made from chemicals derived not from coal as in Germany or oil as in the USA, but from molasses, the byproduct of sugar beet.

Britain built the world’s first nuclear power station at Calder Hall. Plans were in place for many more before North Sea gas made electricity from gas turbines much cheaper. France, on the other hand, built some sixty giving it a lead in nuclear power technology. Britain stuck with massive power stations powered by pulverised coal producing steam in cathedral like boilers.

Britain’s energy plant manufacturers are now mainly owned by Siemens and it is they who are rolling out renewables. Rolls-Royce, which once owned boiler maker Northern Engineering Industries, is focusing on smaller local nuclear plants. Alternative sources of energy are very much the focus of much of British industry. Companies like Scottish and Southern are promoting renewables projects but often turning to non UK suppliers. Companies like ITM Energy are exploring hydrogen. There is much going on.

I write more on this in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and in the sequel in progress Whatever Happened to British Manufacturing.

Whatever Happened to the British Electricity and Electronics Industry?

 My work in progress is exploring the years since the Festival of Britain closed its doors to see how the hopes inherent in the festival were played out. 

The more I read, the more I reflect on the essence of British manufacturing. We were, we are, very clever. Talking to a member of the team at Rustons who developed gas turbines from the ground breaking work by Frank Whittle on jet engines, I am in no doubt at all that both technically and commercially their work was hugely successful. I include it in this post under electronics because of the life changing input of gas turbines on the generation of electricity and all that brings with it. 

Away from the generation of electricity to its applications, the way companies like Marconi, Ferranti and EMI built civil applications from wartime experience is life affirming. To invent a transistor is one thing, to incorporate it into the electronics in aircraft in crowded skies, where the margin for error is zero, is quite another. To have an idea that it may be possible to report in digital form the shape of objects lying close together and one top of one another is crazy enough, but then to transform the idea into an instrument that can scan the human body is simply brilliant. 

In commercial terms it is evident that success is time relative. Looking at the great names of British electronics, AEI, English Electric, GEC, EMI, Thorn, Plessey, Ferranti, Marconi and Brush it is clear that every dog has its day. It is the exceptional dog whose day extends much beyond. AEI through its constituent companies British Thompson Houston and Metropolitan Vickers did the heavy lifting that gave us the National Grid; it also gave birth to the oldest semiconductor manufacturer still working in the UK. English Electric gave us aeroplanes and trains but also brought out the brilliance of Marconi. GEC, under Arnold Weinstock, brought in a whole new approach to financial discipline. EMI gave us the framework on which British television was based up to the seventies. Thorn gave us fluorescent lighting and television rental. Plessey gave us advanced telecommunications. Ferranti electronics guided post war British missiles and Marconi made aircraft safe. When I walk my dog past the electricity substation across the road, the name Brush is clear to see on the bank of transformers. 

None of these companies have survived other than in a much reduced form. 

I am working through the histories of these and other electronic companies to try to identify successes and failures and some of the influences and possible causes. My hope is that it will help to inform the future. 

For me, every bit as exciting is the quiet success of companies created since 1951 and playing their part with great success in 21st century Britain. Just a couple of examples are Wilson Power Solutions ITM Power and ARM. There are many more.

A review in the PwC former partners magazine

I am grateful for the support of my former firm. The members of this group of retired partners have been leaders of their profession, many acting for the British Manufacturing companies about which I write.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 provided a prism through which I could view this astonishing story. It is interesting to see in the review this other Price Waterhouse connection from the diaries of Edwin Waterhouse

You can buy How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World from Pen&Sword

BBC 100 - How it happened

If you were one of the many radio hams who had taken advantage of the supply of surplus radio parts following the ending the war, you would have enjoyed the broadcasts by the Marconi Company from Chelmsford. In1922, you would have received the first broadcasts from the British Broadcasting Company. This had been formed by leading electrical manufacturers: Marconi, GEC, BTH, Metropolitan Vickers, Western Electric and the Radio Communication Company.

A public hungry for new and exciting technology were, by and large, in for disappointment. Of the leading companies which formed the BBC, only GEC was really involved in consumer products and it was only they who produced reasonably priced receivers for the new broadcasts. It will be apparent that at this stage the wireless was a very small part of a very much bigger and more diverse business.

In wireless, the amateur reigned supreme. Crystal sets, often made from kits, outnumbered the more expensive valve radios even though they had severe limitations of use. The other five companies owning the BBC produced only components, many producing valves alongside light bulbs. There was, early on, one exception: Burndept, a small company set up by an amateur enthusiast who produce high quality but rather complicated receivers. Marconi, through their Marconiphone company, produced valve receivers, but not many. They subcontracted manufacture to the company that would become Plessey, but only for a limited period, and Plessey reverted to component manufacture. Pye was another company involved in a small way in those early days. 

Marconi’s approach was half hearted, and allowed small manufacturers and amateurs to dominate the body of licence fee payers, indeed so successfully that there were many more experimenter licence holders than full licence holders, much to the disadvantage of the BBC and its founders. 

I write more about the early radio manufacturers in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World, available from Pen & Sword. 

Radios being repaired at COD Greenford in WW2, from my book War on Wheels.

Morris enters the motor race

In 1893, William Morris set out on his career, first repairing bicycles. I know rather more about him than the other motor manufacturers, probably because of his later fame as Lord Nuffield. One by-product of this is an engaging biography of him written in 1955 by P.W.S. Andrews and Elizabeth Brunner which I think my father bought when it was first published. In this, they offer revealing anecdotes about the man and his business, but also valuable reflection on the business of making motor cars from very nearly the start.

Oxford was probably a good place to set up in business to repair bicycles, given their popularity among young men and the number of wealthy young men in the Oxford Colleges. If it was true of bicycles, it was all-the-more true of motor bikes and motor cars. It didn’t take Morris long to begin experimenting with motor bikes. Andrews and Brunner relate the story of the two bikes he made for the Stanley Show of 1902 at the Agricultural Hall in London. The story goes that he was trying to make the bikes while continuing with his business of cycle repair, essentially working all hours. Things became tense when parts for the new bikes were late arriving. When eventually they appeared, he worked non-stop for four days and nights before taking the bikes to London. When he arrived at Paddington, he arranged for horse transport to take the bikes, and he followed on the steam underground railway. He made the mistake of sitting down, for he fell straight to sleep. The train guard woke him only just in time to get to the show. The bikes were well received, but, soon after Morris’s businesses partner left, and Morris had to start again.

Motor bikes, however, were not where Morris saw the future, and so he set about designing a motor car. He had been running a business both repairing and hiring cars, and this had taught him a massive amount about what worked and what didn’t. His reputation had also attracted other manufacturers to appoint him as their sales agent in Oxford, and he was selling cars for well-known motor car makers such as Arrol-Johnson, Belsize, Humber, Hupmobile, Singer, Standard and Wolseley and motor bikes for Douglas, Enfield, Sunbeam and Triumph.

You can read much more in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World 

I also posted on social media an anecdote which might amuse

William Morris was of course one of the great motoring entrepreneurs. Unlike some of his fellow petrol heads, motor cycles were not where Morris saw the future. In his biography there is an anecdote about car supply. It was the occasion of the 1906 General Election, and candidates were perceiving a benefit in having a motor car to carry them round on their electioneering. It seems the Morris’s reputation was spreading far and wide, for he was asked by a candidate in Sterling to find a suitable car. There were none available in Britain, and so Morris set off for Paris where he found a Lacoste & Batman car. This was a highly regarded make, and Morris must have felt thoroughly satisfied. That is, until twenty-five miles from Paris, when the car broke down with a seized gear-box and back-axle. He discovered that despite promises, oil and grease had not been filled before he set off.  Morris returned to Paris, and bought the necessary parts, which he then fitted and set off again. Five miles short of Amiens, a broken exhaust valve stopped the car once more. Happily, spare valves had been provided, but they were one eighth of an inch too long. He did what many early motorists did in such circumstances, and spent one and a half hours grinding the valve down on the cobble stones to the required size. He then made it back to Oxford where his staff took over to drive up to Stirling. Late that night, he received a message that the car had broken down again, just short of York, with a broken bevel gear in the back axle. Morris set off for York, and, with the help of a local blacksmith, made and brazed two new teeth to the bevel. This sequence of break down and repair followed him all the way to Stirling, where he arrived two weeks late and much the poorer. He offered to rescind the contract, but the purchaser went ahead and no more was heard. Morris had though learned a great deal, all of which he incorporated into the design of the Morris Oxford. The other thing he learnt was not to make all the car himself, but to seek reliable suppliers of the key parts.