Manufacturing for war - The First World War

Competition in manufacturing perhaps led to more marked and destructive competition in war. Whether we like it or not, war was a catalyst to accelerate manufacturing progress. The aeroplane offers the example of incremental progress during the first war to the great leap-frog to jet power in the second. All this carried with it development in electronics and in communication as telephone and telegraph made way for wireless and radar. Chemistry took a major boost from the exploitation of the by-product of oil refining as oil consumption grew exponentially. Between the wars in Britain the old industries struggled as other nations, which had come later into the field, took advantage of new ideas. In a sense, war left the victor weaker and the vanquished strong and this underlies the course of British manufacturing ever since. British manufacturing rose to the challenge of exporting to balance the nation’s books. In 1951, a brave nation put on a brave and confident face in presenting the Festival of Britain to a nation in need of cheer.

Looking first at WW1,

Essentially the whole country put its shoulder to the war effort. Women worked in factories which had been strictly male preserves. Shipbuilding was busy. The big armament companies Armstrong, Vickers, Cammell Laird and John Brown honed their skills at truly heavy engineering of guns. Smaller engineering companies made tanks. On the lighter side, aircraft manufacturers leapfrogged each other as one technical improvement succeeded another. Motor companies grew, as they manufactured military trucks and cars, indeed anything from metal. Pharmaceutical companies shook off the country’s dependence on German manufacturers. Electrical companies developed further telephone and wireless. The other side of the coin was that the country’s coffers emptied, as it paid for all it had been supplied by the USA. The USA took over as world manufacturing’s top dog. I wrote about army supply in WW1 in my book Ordnance.

You can read extracts from the chapter on WW1 from my book How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World but following this link.

The Chilwell shell filling factory after the disastrous explosion

Manufacturing - Electricity

Telegraph expanded under the sea until the farther reaches of Empire were linked. Telephone followed a little later. The invention of the dynamo enabled far greater use of electricity. Cities began to be lit by electricity. Electric motors began to appear in factories and to power vehicles on and off rails. Telegraph needed wire; radio was wireless. The first steps of using wireless, particularly with ships, were taken before the first shots were fired from the trenches.

Follow this link to read more of what I have to say about the early days of the British electrical industry.

Manufacturing: Internal Combustion

 Oil had been discovered in coal mines as a source of combustible fluid and hence power. It could be burnt to heat water and so make steam. It could also be made to combust in an enclosed cylinder, driving a piston. 

The bicycle had sewn the seed, and, particularly, the French began to explore adding power, from internal combustion, to bicycles. Once the famous Red Flag had ceased to control speed on British roads, engineers and entrepreneurs began to build an industry that would dwarf textiles, iron and steel and coal.

Why stay on the ground? Thinking, that had been around since the time of the Great Exhibition, could be given its wings, and man flew. Ships were powered by diesel.

You can read more by following this link 

Manufacturing: the sewing machine and bicycle

 “No useful sewing machine was ever invented by one man; and all first attempts to do work by machinery, previously done by hand, had been failures. It was only after several able inventors had failed in their attempts, that someone with the mental powers to combine the efforts of others, with his own, at last produced a practical sewing machine.’

It is the story of this book: the way one idea builds on another, until finally an answer is found. The sewing machine was ultimately an American invention, vital to the textile industry but also to many homes across the land. It brings in another aspect, how more and more inventions were crossing borders, with people of different nations building on the work of others. It is also the story of how one invention leads to another: first the sewing machine, next the bicycle. You can read more by following this link

Manufacturing and the nineteenth century home

 The seventy years between the Great Exhibition and the start of the Great War had seen great changes in the way many people worked and travelled. Yet, the way food and homewares were produced hadn’t changed a great deal. The local butcher, baker, grocer and green grocer supplied daily needs. A carpenter might make furniture, a seamstress a dress, a cobbler boots, a tailor a suit of clothes. Change thought was afoot, and I seek to tell it through the prism of my father who was born in 1891.

You can read more by following this link. 

The house in Dulwich where my father was born. You can read about his remarkable life in Dunkirk to D Day

Manufacturing and Armaments

 Instruments of war have been manufactured for centuries: swords by cutlers, pistols and muskets by gunsmiths and cannon by iron foundries. It would be logical to suggest that these manufacturers simply grew and developed over time. To a small extent this is true, and the Arsenal at Woolwich was, for many years, clear evidence of this. The story of British armament manufacturing is more complex and grew out of the industrial revolution, but particularly the rivalry which it inspired. From the time of the Crimea, shipbuilders became gun makers.

Read more by following this link 

Weeding  barracks 

Manufacturing and Communication

 The growth, that steam enabled, demanded an administrative infrastructure: clerks who could keep records, newspaper men who could disseminate news. People, receiving ever better education, were hungry for ideas and entertainment. Printing and paper making were key. London was the epicentre, and was becoming revolutionised by railway connections. Electricity too dates from decades before the Great Exhibition and first found use in the telegraph, initially using cables laid alongside railway lines, linking the nation.

Read more by following this link