high-speed+production

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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From 1844 until 1962, the Clyde shipyard of William Denny and Brothers, Dumbarton, produced over 1,500 ships, trained innumerable students of all nationalities in shipbuilding and marine engineering, and for the seventy-plus years of their existence were accepted worldwide as the leaders in the application of science to ship design and construction. Until the closure of the yard members of the Denny family were among the partners and later directors of the firm: they included men as distinguished as Dr Peter Denny (1821(?)–95), Sir Archibald Denny (1860–1936) and Sir Maurice Denny (1886– 1955), the main collaborator in the design of the Denny-Brown ship stabilizer.

One of the most influential of this shipbuilding family was William Denny, now referred to as William 3! His early education was at Dumbarton, then on Jersey and finally at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, before he commenced an apprenticeship at his father's shipyard. From the outset he not only showed great aptitude for learning and hard work but also displayed an ability to create good relationships with all he came into contact with. At the early age of 21 he was admitted a partner of the shipbuilding business of William Denny and Brothers, and some years later also of the associated engineering firm of Denny \& Co. His deep-felt interest in what is now known as industrial relations led him in 1871 to set up a piecework system of payment in the shipyard. In this he was helped by the Yard Manager, Richard Ramage, who later was to found the Leith shipyard, which produced the world's most elegant steam yachts. This research was published later as a pamphlet called The Worth of Wages, an unusual and forward-looking action for the 1860s, when Denny maintained that an absentee employer should earn as much contempt and disapproval as an absentee landlord! In 1880 he initiated an awards scheme for all company employees, with grants and awards for inventions and production improvements. William Denny was not slow to impose new methods and to research naval architecture, a special interest being progressive ship trials with a view to predicting effective horsepower. In time this led to his proposal to the partners to build a ship model testing tank beside the Dumbarton shipyard; this scheme was completed in 1883 and was to the third in the world (after the Admiralty tank at Torquay, managed by William Froude and the Royal Netherlands Navy facility at Amsterdam, under B.J. Tideman. In 1876 the Denny Shipyard started work with mild-quality shipbuilding steel on hulls for the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, and in 1879 the world's first two ships of any size using this weight-saving material were produced: they were the Rotomahana for the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand and the Buenos Ayrean for the Allan Line of Glasgow. On the naval-architecture side he was involved in Denny's proposals for standard cross curves of stability for all ships, which had far-reaching effects and are now accepted worldwide. He served on the committee working on improvements to the Load Line regulations and many other similar public bodies. After a severe bout of typhoid and an almost unacceptable burden of work, he left the United Kingdom for South America in June 1886 to attend to business with La Platense Flotilla Company, an associate company of William Denny and Brothers. In March the following year, while in Buenos Aires, he died by his own hand, a death that caused great and genuine sadness in the West of Scotland and elsewhere.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Public utilities

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He was the third child and the eldest of three boys born to John Murdoch and Anna Bruce. His father, a millwright and joiner, spelled his name Murdock on moving to England. He was educated for some years at Old Cumnock Parish School and in 1777, with his father, he built a "wooden horse", supposed to have been a form of cycle. In 1777 he set out for the Soho manufactory of Boulton \& Watt, where he quickly found employment, Boulton supposedly being impressed by the lad's hat. This was oval and made of wood, and young William had turned it himself on a lathe of his own manufacture. Murdock quickly became Boulton \& Watt's representative in Cornwall, where there was a flourishing demand for steam-engines. He lived at Redruth during this period.

It is said that a number of the inventions generally ascribed to James Watt are in fact as much due to Murdock as to Watt. Examples are the piston and slide valve and the sun-and-planet gearing. A number of other inventions are attributed to Murdock alone: typical of these is the oscillating cylinder engine which obviated the need for an overhead beam.

In about 1784 he planned a steam-driven road carriage of which he made a working model. He also planned a high-pressure non-condensing engine. The model carriage was demonstrated before Murdock's friends and travelled at a speed of 6–8 mph (10–13 km/h). Boulton and Watt were both antagonistic to their employees' developing independent inventions, and when in 1786 Murdock set out with his model for the Patent Office, having received no reply to a letter he had sent to Watt, Boulton intercepted him on the open road near Exeter and dissuaded him from going any further.

In 1785 he married Mary Painter, daughter of a mine captain. She bore him four children, two of whom died in infancy, those surviving eventually joining their father at the Soho Works. Murdock was a great believer in pneumatic power: he had a pneumatic bell-push at Sycamore House, his home near Soho. The pattern-makers lathe at the Soho Works worked for thirty-five years from an air motor. He also conceived the idea of a vacuum piston engine to exhaust a pipe, later developed by the London Pneumatic Despatch Company's railway and the forerunner of the atmospheric railway.

Another field in which Murdock was a pioneer was the gas industry. In 1791, in Redruth, he was experimenting with different feedstocks in his home-cum-office in Cross Street: of wood, peat and coal, he preferred the last. He designed and built in the backyard of his house a prototype generator, washer, storage and distribution plant, and publicized the efficiency of coal gas as an illuminant by using it to light his own home. In 1794 or 1795 he informed Boulton and Watt of his experimental work and of its success, suggesting that a patent should be applied for. James Watt Junior was now in the firm and was against patenting the idea since they had had so much trouble with previous patents and had been involved in so much litigation. He refused Murdock's request and for a short time Murdock left the firm to go home to his father's mill. Boulton \& Watt soon recognized the loss of a valuable servant and, in a short time, he was again employed at Soho, now as Engineer and Superintendent at the increased salary of £300 per year plus a 1 per cent commission. From this income, he left £14,000 when he died in 1839.

In 1798 the workshops of Boulton and Watt were permanently lit by gas, starting with the foundry building. The 180 ft (55 m) façade of the Soho works was illuminated by gas for the Peace of Paris in June 1814. By 1804, Murdock had brought his apparatus to a point where Boulton \& Watt were able to canvas for orders. Murdock continued with the company after the death of James Watt in 1819, but retired in 1830 and continued to live at Sycamore House, Handsworth, near Birmingham.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Land transport

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Royce was the younger son of a flour miller. His father's death forced him to earn his own living from the age of 10 selling newspapers, as a post office messenger boy, and in other jobs. At the age of 14, he became an apprentice at the Great Northern Railway's locomotive works, but was unable to complete his apprenticeship due to a shortage of money. He moved to a tool company in Leeds, then in 1882 he became a tester for the London Electric Light \& Power Company and attended classes at the City \& Guilds Technical College. In the same year, the company made him Chief Electrical Engineer for the lighting of the streets of Liverpool.

In 1884, at the age of 21, he founded F.H. Royce \& Co (later called Royce Ltd, from 1894 to 1933) with a capital of £70, manufacturing arc lamps, dynamos and electric cranes. In 1903, he bought a 10 hp Deauville car which proved noisy and unreliable; he therefore designed his own car. By the end of 1903 he had produced a twocylinder engine which ran for many hundreds of hours driving dynamos; on 31 March 1904, a 10 hp Royce car was driven smoothly and silently from the works in Cooke Street, Manchester. This car so impressed Charles S. Rolls, whose London firm were agents for high-class continental cars, that he agreed to take the entire output from the Manchester works. In 1906 they jointly formed Rolls-Royce Ltd and at the end of that year Royce produced the first 40/50 hp Silver Ghost, which remained in production until 1925 when it was replaced by the Phantom and Wraith. The demand for the cars grew so great that in 1908 manufacture was transferred to a new factory in Derby.

In 1911 Royce had a breakdown due to overwork and his lack of attention to taking regular meals. From that time he never returned to the works but continued in charge of design from a drawing office in his home in the south of France and later at West Wittering, Sussex, England. During the First World War he designed the Falcon, Hawk and Condor engines as well as the VI2 Eagle, all of which were liquid-cooled. Later he designed the 36.7-litre Rolls-Royce R engines for the Vickers Supermarine S.6 and S.6B seaplanes which were entered for the Schneider Trophy (which they won in 1929 and 1931, the 5.5 having won in 1927 with a Napier Lion engine) and set a world speed record of 408 mph (657 km/h) in 1931; the 1941 Griffon engine was derived from the R.

Royce was an improver rather than an innovator, though he did invent a silent form of valve gear, a friction-damped slipper flywheel, the Royce carburettor and a spring drive for timing gears. He was a modest man with a remarkable memory who concentrated on perfecting the detail of every component. He married Minnie Punt, but they had no children. A bust of him at the Derby factory is captioned simply "Henry Royce, Mechanic".

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