Grace's Guide
British Industrial History
Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 142,881 pages of information and 228,796 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.
Rank Taylor Hobson
From Graces Guide
1886 Brothers William and Thomas Smithies Taylor started a company to make lenses as T. S. and W. Taylor.
1887 W. S. H. Hobson joined and became the sales face of Taylor Hobson.
The company then became Taylor, Taylor and Hobson
1947 Part of the J Arthur Rank Organisation and becoming known as Rank Taylor Hobson.
1968 New division established within Rank Precision Industries to focus on development of scientific instruments business; initially involved Hilger and Watts, Rank Taylor Hobson, Rank Bush Murphy Electronics, Rank Electronic Tubes[1].
1974 Asked to investigate alignment of tracks on tanks by using an optical processes.[2]
1996 Schroder Ventures acquired Taylor Hobson from the Rank Organisation.