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.  

The British Chemical Industry comes of age

 In the aftermath of WW2, the British Chemical Industry would have been unrecognisable to a time traveller from the 21st century. Plastics were Bakelite, Perspex was for the windscreens of Spitfires and polythene for the insulation of cables for radar. The chemicals required were derived from the fermentation of molasses from sugar beet, most of which was produced by the Distillers Company which had suffered from a decrease in the consumption of whisky after WW1. The textile industry was still dependent on a constant supply of chlorine for bleaching. Fertilisers were being manufactured, but effective pesticides and weedkillers were still very much in the laboratory.

The industry comprised ICI, which had brought together in 1926 the major British manufacturers of explosives, alkali and dyestuffs. There were then Albright & Wilson with a near monopoly of phosphorus, Fisons, and a string of other smaller producers. Laporte was producing Hydrogen Peroxide, then identified as a rocket fuel

Absent were the oil majors. 

In the USA the story was different, for there were plentiful local reserves of oil which Union Carbide explored to find uses for the lighter distillation of crude oil, naphta. They built crackers adjacent to refineries to exploit these gases. Interestingly it was ICI which first made Perspex and polythene using chemicals derived from molasses. The USA could lay claim to nylon, although, again, it was the British in the small Manchester firm of British Calico Printers that produced the first terylene. ICI took this on, given their much larger capacity. 

The British exploitation of chemicals from oil came first during WW2 with the Derby company, British Celanese which built their own cracker to replace the acetate they produced for the manufacturer of rayon. They were followed in the late forties by BP in partnership with Distillers at Grangemouth, Shell at Stanlow and ICI at their vast Wilton complex. 

I write about the early days of the chemical industry in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World which you can buy by following this link . Later years will be covered in the sequel volume.

Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World largely by addressing obstacles to progress

Manchester mills were transporting tons of cotton goods to the port of Liverpool by canal, built by the Duke of Bridgewater, but which took some thirty-six hours and which was expensive. What was needed was a steam railway. 

George Stephenson planned the rail route to Liverpool, which included sixty-four bridges and viaducts along thirty-five miles of track. It was, though, more likely that his son, Robert, designed and built his “Rocket”, ‘by the happy combination of the multitubular boiler and the steamblast, Mr Robert Stephenson succeeded in producing an engine far superior to any previously built in point of speed and efficiency.’ Heavy rails were laid at considerable cost and, with heavier locomotives, ‘the superiority of the railway system to every other mode of conveyance was placed beyond question’. By 1850, the line was carrying two million tons of cotton a year. It also carried passengers to ships leaving Liverpool for the new world with emigrants seeking a new life, in place of their previous cargo of slaves. It was the first twin track line in the world that carried paying passengers and so may rightly lay claim to be the birthplace of modern passenger railways.

Fifty years later damage was being caused to Manchester’s cotton trade by the cost of rail transport and Liverpool dock fees. The answer was to dig a new thirty-five mile long canal from Manchester to the sea. The traditional method of digging, by the employment of many thousand navvies, was simply not viable and so an alternative had to be found and it was, in the shape of Ruston & Proctor of Lincoln. Joseph Ruston had, in 1885, delivered a paper to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in Lincoln on his steam navvy, described as being something between a traction engine and a crane. He had impressed, for the Manchester Canal Company engaged seventy-one of these massive machines. He impressed even more when the many machines, buried by flood water in 1890, were soon in full working and returned to work successfully to complete the canal.

You can find more of the story of How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World in my book of the same name available from publishers, Pen & Sword

Textile machinery

 Looking at textiles, where it all began, Bury man, John Kay invented the flying shuttle to be followed by James Hargreaves and the spinning jenny, Richard Arkwright and his water frame and Samuel Crompton’s mule. Famously Arkwright built the first factory. The sewing machine followed from American and, not long after, companies like Hyam & Co of Manchester sold garments from a chain of stores. Hyams were also writ large as advertisers in the catalogue of the Great Exhibition.

Textiles were the product; in time more power was needed - steam!

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

10,000 post views

 Thank you everyone for viewing this blog. An exciting time following the publication of How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. Some positive feedback and Amazon have accepted the review post I offered from the foreword to the book:

Podcast on How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World

 Delighted to talk to Stuart Whitehead and Joe Reynolds on the MTDMFG podcast. It was good to dig a little beneath the surface of How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

You can listen to the podcast by following this link