Charles Gilbert Heron
Charles Gilbert Heron (1897-1944)
1945 Obituary [1]
CHARLES GILBERT HERON was born in 1897 and served his apprenticeship with the Consett Iron Company, Ltd., from 1913 to 1917, and concurrently attended the local Technical Institute. After serving for two years in the R.N.A.S. and R.A.F., as mechanic and armourer, he continued his technical training from 1919 to 1923 at Birmingham Technical School, and during the last two years of that period gained experience as improver and fitter with Messrs. Belliss and Morcom, Ltd., and in the drawing office of Messrs. M. B. Wild and Company, Ltd.
He then went to Spain to take up the appointment of assistant mechanical engineer to the Orconera Iron Ore Company, of Bilbao, where for the following thirteen years he was in charge of the working and maintenance of a large aerial ropeway system and was in control of a personnel of 500. He returned in 1936 to the Consett Iron Company as assistant to the chief mechanical engineer of the company's collieries, but two years later accepted an appointment with the Rio Tinto Company as assistant to the chief of mines workshops, with the charge of the machinery in the mines and metallurgical departments. His promotion to the post of chief of mines workshops followed in 1940, with responsibility for the maintenance of motor transport and railway rolling stock, in addition to the charge of large repair shops.
Mr. Heron was elected an Associate Member of the Institution in 1943, only six months before his untimely death, which occurred on 12th January 1944.