My books on manufacturing

My books on manufacturing
My books on manufacturing history

Thursday, January 2, 2025

Newcastle and Gateshead manfacturing history

 Coal was at the heart of the economy of Tyneside which, with its long navigable estuary, was able to ship many of the millions of tons produced by the Northumberland coalfield. The presence of so many mines attracted talented engineers who rose to the challenge of tackling flooding and poor ventilation that made mining so dangerous. They also addressed the economic imperative of cost effective transport. The answer was steam as I wrote in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World (HBSTMW) and men like George and Robert Stephenson. It is well known that the eminent scientist Humphrey Davy invented the safety lamp, but George Stephenson produced a lamp equally safe only a few weeks later and this was widely used. Stephenson with his son Robert did go on to produce the Rocket and many more railway locomotives. Again, I cover this at some length in HBSTMW.

Shipbuilding was at the heart of the Tyne with the river in the mid nineteenth century 'positively bristling with ship yards'. Of these the most famous were T&W Smith, Wood Skinner, Wigham Richardson, William Cleland & Co, John Couts, Andrew Leslie & Co and one of the most successful, Charles Mitchell, with his yard at Walker. Mitchell added to his success by marrying Anne Swan through whom he acquired two brothers in law Charles and Henry Swan. Charles Swan merged with the Sunderland George Hunter, to form Swan Hunter; Henry later took over the Mitchell yard.

William Armstrong trained as a solicitor but was irresistibly drawn by the power of water which he had witnessed in his walks across Northumberland. He went into business first in hydraulics and then became a master of the technology of big guns which he manufactured at Elswick working closely with Mitchell on naval vessels. The two companies eventually merged in 1882. He was rightly included as one of the 'Deadly Triumvirate'. He later merged with Joseph Whitworth of Manchester and together they joined with Vickers of Sheffield. I write about all three at some length in HBSTMW. The Newcastle works built tanks, made presses for the newspaper and motor industry, and rolling mill equipment for the steel industry.

Like a number of other cities, Newcastle boasted its Lit and Phil Society, founded in 1793. One lecturer was Joseph Swan who demonstrated the electric light bulb at the same time as Edison was revealing his work on the other side of the Atlantic. Pragmatism prevailed and the two came together in the company known as Ediswan.

The shipbuilding and engineering industries were fertile ground for CA Parsons who invented the revolutionary steam turbine, equally useful in propelling ships and powering electricity generators. German born John Merz married into the Wigham Richardson family and with his brother championed the production of cheap electricity to power the growing city and its industries.

Over the river in Gateshead iron foundries prospered and the production of Alkali using the Leblanc process was championed by local entrepreneur William Losh. This was followed by soap works and a chemical plant run by Christian Allhusen which covered a massive 137 acres of the south shore. By the time of the electrical revolution the highly polluting Leblanc process was replaced by that invented by Solvay but this gravitated towards the Cheshire salt fields. Tyneside would get their own back when cheap electricity attracted Castner Kellner from Cheshire. Gateshead was also home to the workshops of the North Eastern Railway Company which at one time employed 3,300 men before it moved to Darlington. R&W Hawthorn manufactured steam locomotives. Clarke Chapman built steam engines and later nuclear generation plant, and, together with Hebburn engineers A Reyrolle & Co, CA Parsons and others, joined to become Northern Engineering Industries which was bought first by Rolls-Royce and then by the German Siemens. I write about these energy companies in Vehicles to Vaccines.

In the early twentieth century the Wigham Richardson yard specialised in cable laying ships, Armstrong Whitworth focused on the Russian market and, at their naval yard, produced warships not only for the Royal Navy but also for Norway and Japan. Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson built the renowned RMS Muretania at their Wallsend yard. I write of their contribution to the First World War effort in Ordnance.

The interwar years saw the demand for coal plummet which drew the response of reduced wages and lay offs which in turn partly provoked the National Strike of 1926. Tragically the strike handed export markets to competing coal producing countries, Germany and Poland, and so the decline of coal began. Along with coal, ship building suffered. Jarrow was home to Palmers shipyard which closed in 1936 creating mass unemployment and triggering the Jarrow march. Some help was provided through the Special Areas (Development and Improvement) Act of 1934, but the days of being the workshop of the world would never return. I write of the post-war story of British shipbuilding in Vehicles to Vaccines.

At nearby Fawdon, Rowntree manufactured Fruit Gum, Pastilles and Jelly. Imperial Tobacco built a factory at Heaton in the forties to make Wills cigarettes. There were, and are, many independent smaller manufacturing businesses, not least Jackson the Taylor which merged with Burtons. 

In South Shields, Plessey built a factory to manufacture electronic telephone exchanges. In the nineties, the German Siemens set up a plant to manufacture semi-conductors but, with falling demand, it closed after two years.

Further reading

Alistair Moffat and George Rosie, Tyneside - A History of Newcastle and Gateshead from Earliest Times (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2005) 

How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World

Vehicles to Vaccines

Ordnance

Henrietta Heald , William Armstrong, Magician of the North

Anthony Slaven, British Shipbuilding 1500-2010 (Lancaster: Crucible, 2013)

Sunday, December 29, 2024

Giants of British Manufacturing

 If I look at the years from the start of the Industrial Revolution up to the Festival of Britain, I can draw up a list a relatively well known names of the movers and shakers of British Manufacturing. Indeed I have written about them in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World  

Looking at the years since then, I have found names perhaps not as well known, many of which I remember from years gone by, but whose efforts and talents shine out.

Kelvin Bray was managing director of Ruston Gas Turbines (and its successors) for a quarter of a century. The company manufactured gas turbines which would be used by 80% of the world’s oil industry. Kelvin was a Grammar School boy who unusually for the time won a scholarship to Kings College, Cambridge. He went on to work on the development of the gas turbine from Frank Whittle’s jet engine. The company, now under the ownership of Siemens, continues to manufacture gas turbines in Lincoln for world markets. The image is of Bray and his colleagues receiving the MacRobert award.

Ronald Weeks was chairman of Vickers which had been brave enough to invest in a new plant at Tinsley Park in Sheffield in the period between nationalisations when other steel makers held back. Weeks was the son of a north country mining engineer who like Bray had studied at Cambridge. He served in the First World War and then worked at Pilkington pioneering new methods of management. In the Second World War he had responsibility for army equipment as Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff. After the war he joined Vickers as chairman of English Steel where he negotiated first its nationalisation and then its denationalisation. He held the chair of Vickers through a time of radical change.

John Harvey-Jones of ICI had the job of rebuilding the chemical giant after the recession of the seventies. His approach was to allow one thousand flowers to bloom knowing that that way the successes of the future would be found. Affirmation of his approach is perhaps found in ICI’s offspring Astra-Zeneca and its lifesaving Covid vaccine. The ICI bureaucracy remained to be tackled later.

David McMurtry at Renishaw in 1973 invented a touch-trigger probe to meet an inspection requirement of the Olympus engine which powered Concorde. His company, Renishaw plc, has since grown into a major international force leading amongst much else additive manufacturing - the 3D printing of complex components.

William Weir of Weir Group was not only a member of the founding family of the company that bears his name, but he led that company through challenging times and then wrote a very personal account of its history. William Weir was the grandson of the company’s founder and worked in the business from 1954 until he relinquished the post of chairman.

Arnold Weinstock at GEC made money. He took over both AEC and EE and created a massively strong company. He was followed by George Simpson who made fatal decisions in the dot com boom which led to the end of what was then GEC Marconi. The company’s defence interests then combined with the rump of the British aircraft industry and the remnants of the Royal Ordnance factories to become the highly successful defence manufacturer BAE Systems  

Oliver Littleton, at AEI which manufactured the first jet engines, wrestled with the impossible task of bringing together long standing rivals, British Westinghouse and British Thompson Houston. 

George Nelson of English Electric was a truly energetic entrepreneur. English Electric would manufacture iconic aircraft and railway locomotives, as well as giving birth to ICL, not least because Nelson had had the wisdom to buy Marconi.

F.N. Sutherland, was a man with an MA from Cambridge who had worked an apprenticeship at English Electric and who had grown with that company’s overseas operations. He was appointed by George Nelson to lead the Marconi companies following their acquisition by EE. He turned out to be the perfect man for the job. Interestingly, he followed the tradition set by Marconi’s former boss, Admiral Grant, of involving his wife in the welfare of his employees, something I had only ever seen at the Central Ordnance Depot at Greenford in the early years of the Second World War.

Dr Eric Eastwood was recruited by Marconi after the war to lead its work on radar. He undoubtedly enhanced the technical expertise within the company which in turn led to it being the most significant part of GEC prior to that company’s breakup. Marconi Defence Systems was the perfect fit for British Aerospace with which it merged to become BAE Systems, now a respected and successful British company.

Jules Thorn was the driving force behind Thorn Electric making television widely available and forming the powerhouse of Thorn EMI  

Ferranti is a name forever associated with computers and semiconductors as well as early electricity generation and meters for measuring consumption. 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.

George Turnbull was a gifted manager and engineer who had served his time with Standard Triumph. Following the creation of BLMC, he was asked by Donald Stokes to tackle the underperformance of Austin-Morris. He was successful and Austin-Morris was producing half of the profits of the group. His reward was to tackle the Leyland truck and bus business, once more with success. On the reorganisation of the BL group in 1973, Turnbull was passed over for the role of deputy CEO and so the expectation of becoming CEO in due course. He left, and took up the challenge of creating a world class motor company out of the Korean Hyundai. Success followed him once more. For BLMC the story would be less promising.

William Lyons created and Jon Egan saved Jaguar. Lyons’ genius creates the E type and Mk 10. Sir John Egan brought his wide experience in the motor industry to Jaguar where he took a once famous brand which had been seriously neglected and painstakingly addressed areas of shortcoming restoring it to its former glory as evidenced in the price Ford paid for it.

Oliver Lucas embraced vital aspects of manufacturing. He was as interested in the manufacturing process as in the product and so achieved great economies. Above all he was committed to what we now know as life-long learning. He encouraged his managers to learn from each other and from other companies. He espoused relationships with academia including financing a chair, the Lucas Professor of Production Engineering, at the University of Birmingham.Peter Bennett at Lucas built an astonishingly inventive supplier to the British motor and aircraft industries. Once again it was George Simpson who sold out to the Americans.

Sir Arnold Hall was chairman and managing director of Hawker Siddeley from 1967 to 1977. He achieved much but top of the list must be Hawker’s decision to remain with the Airbus project when the government decided to end its involvement.

Rolls Royce had to be rescued from overspending on the RB211 which would become the highly successful Trent engine. Thereafter the aircraft engine manufacturer became number two in the world to the giant GE. I don't think there is one particular CEO to mention. The company has gone through a tumultuous half century since the RB211 and is now exploring the potential for the nuclear technology it has quietly developed since the war.

Sir John Parker studied naval architecture and mechanical engineering at Belfast College of Technology and at Queen’s University Belfast also learning on the job at Harland and Wolff. His first management role was at Austin Pickersgill after which he returned to Harlands as CEO from 1983 to 1993. He then moved to Babcock International from 1994 to 2000 first as CEO and then also as chairman. In his first stint at Harland, he championed the introduction of computers. At Babcock he transformed a revered but troubled engineering company into one focused on naval shipbuilding and repair

Dr Richard Beeching is remembered for closing a great many stations and miles of track. What he also did was to modernise the railways in its management of its workforce, in containerising freight and improving the experience of the traveller with more comfortable trains.

Alastair Pilkington, a Cambridge graduate of Mechanical Sciences, served during the Second World War and returned to Cambridge to complete his degree. He was only very distantly related to the family owning the glass manufacturer. He was discovered by a family member exploring family trees, was interviewed and employed. He rose quickly. His massive contribution was in the invention of the float glass process.

Joe Bamford created and his son developed a massive fiercely independent but private company. In terms of size and privacy they might rank alongside Ineos and Tata. However, they have a passion for engineering innovation.

Anita Roddick founded the Body Shop which championed women, sought natural ingredients, demanded fair trade and refused animal testing.

Garfield Weston set his family company on course to become the anchor man of British food manufacturing. The company is now called Associated British Food. He gave much of his wealth to a charitable trust which supports the built heritage.

Laura Ashley was born in Dowlais, Glamorgan in 1925, moved to London but was evacuated back to Wales during the war. She trained as a secretary and worked first in the War Office and then for the Women’s Institute and it was their exhibition at the V&A which inspired her to try her hand at fabric printing in her Pimlico basement kitchen. From this beginning, she and her husband Bernard created a fashion following counter to the swinging sixties trend, and which espoused something altogether more homely.

Michael Perrin was an ICI chemist who had been involved first with the discovery of polythene and then with the nuclear bomb project. He moved out of research into a more managerial role in which he excelled. He was appointed chairman of the Wellcome Foundation in 1953. Research was key. He championed the company’s investment, whilst at the same time distributing millions to the Wellcome Trust for medical projects.

These are just my selection of post war manufacturing heroes; there are many more most of whom are unsung.

Further reading: Vehicles to Vaccines

Friday, December 13, 2024

Glasgow and the Clyde manufacturing history

Shipbuilding has a long history on the Clyde with its banks, at the turn of the twentieth century, having yards side by side for seven miles. Such was its capacity that it produced getting on for one half of the world's shipping. As elsewhere, it began with wood and sail and then progressed to iron, steel and steam, although its clippers would be launched until the 1890s given the need for steam ships to carry massive quantities of coal. Fuel consumption improved as advances in the use of steam made engines more efficient and the days of sail became restricted to yachts, a major pastime of wealthy Glaswegians although they too were increasingly steam powered.

I tend to think of shipping as ocean going; for Glasgow and the Clyde a good deal was for more local transport with paddle steamers making their way up and down the river and as far as Fort William and even Ireland. The city has entrepreneurs such as John Bell and David MacBrain to thank for this. The canals too helped with communication, linking East to West.

Coal mining was huge and large quantities were exported as well as being used to produce pig iron from local ore. This was a low value bulk industry. Glasgow came into its own when the technical skills of its men were brought into focus.

Ships built of iron on the Clyde look to Robert Napier and the Parkside Iron Works. Shipbuilding was seen as a logical extension to iron and steel making and so John Brown of Sheffield bought the J & G Thompson Yard on the Clyde and later built the Queen Mary and both Queens Elizabeth along with many others. Among the other great yards were Yarrow and Fairfield.

William Beardmore probably stands out as the most ambitious and entrepreneurial of the Clyde shipbuilders. At the turn of the twentieth century the British government increased its demands for naval vessels most particularly for the giant Dreadnaught class battleships. These would require much larger births than were generally available and so Beardmore set about building a truly giant yard in Clydebank. Financed in part by Vickers, Beardmore bought first the Parkside Iron Works and then went on to build a state of the art production facility for naval vessels at Dalmuir on Clydebank. It had a fitting out basin of 7.5 acres and had a massive hammer head crane capable of lowering boilers and engines into the ships. I noted that the crane was German made, but that British manufacturers followed its design for similar cranes in other yards. Guns for both the navy and army were made by Beardmore and I wrote of this in Ordnance, my book on how the army was supplied for the Great War. They also produced aero engines during the First World War and went on to design and manufacture their own aircraft. One prewar project was for an early aircraft carrier which never became a reality; another was for airships which were produced. The ravages of the twenties sounded the death knoll for Beardmore much as they inflicted pain on so many others - unemployment reached 30% at one point.

The site was repurposed as a Royal Ordnance engineering factory in the Second World War. At Cardonald another Royal Ordnance factory produced three and a half million 25lb shells and many thousands of heavy bombs. A Rolls-Royce shadow factory at Hillington manufactured Merlin engines. The Albion Motor Company made trucks. West of Glasgow is the village of Bishopton where a Royal Ordnance factory made munitions; it is now run by BAE Systems. The Clyde dockyards, which had survived the depression, produced many tons of shipping. BAE Systems now build naval ships at their yards at Scotstoun and Govan. Alongside all this production, machine tools companies gravitated to Johnstone and contributed greatly to the war effort.

Railways came first to Glasgow in short runs from the coal fields, but then linked East to West, ventured further north and crucially linked the two countries. The Caledonia Works at nearby Kilmarnock built many railway locomotives. Beardsmore too at one time tried its hand at locomotive manufacture.

It wasn't only iron, steel and ships, like the north west of England, Scotland and Glasgow in particular produced linen from locally grown flax and then adapted those skills to the spinning and weaving of cotton. In 1860 there were 20,000 looms being operated in the city. The New Lanark mill run by Robert Owen set an example of rare good employment practices. It was possibly the cotton industry which attracted the American Singer to build his British sewing machine factory on the Clyde. Castle Precision Engineering offers a wonderful story of the history of manufacturing in this great city. Its founder was Polish from Krakow, born in 1921 Jack Tiefenbrun arrived in 1938 and studied engineering. His first job was in the textile industry, maintaining machinery. In 1951 he set up his own company, Textile Engineering Company whose major customer was Singer Sewing Machines.

Charles Tennant's Rollox St bleaching agent factory was the largest in Europe, at the same time polluting the surrounding area. The far less polluting Solvay method was better suited to the minerals of Cheshire and the Glasgow factory eventually shut. Also in Glasgow, Charles Macintosh discovered a way of using rubber to provide waterproofing which resulted in the garment that bares his name; the company later moved to Manchester and became part of Dunlop.

Glasgow was known as the second city of the Empire and boasted buildings that spoke clearly of its civic pride. Like all cities of the industrial revolution, the living and working conditions for most of its population were dire and only started to improve as the nineteenth century drew to a close.

Glasgow remains home to BAE Systems shipbuilding but then has more of a focus on the service and financial sector.

Further reading:

Manufacturing places - the art of re-invention

My exploration of British manufacturing has been sector by sector and chronological. I am now beginning to join up the dots and explore thos...