Vickers
From Graces Guide
of Vickers House, Broadway, Westminster, London SW
Vickers was a famous British engineering conglomerate that merged into Vickers-Armstrong in 1927.
Background
- 1790 Company established by George Naylor.
- 1828 Vickers was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by the miller Edward Vickers and his father-in-law George Naylor in 1828. Naylor was a partner in the foundry Naylor and Sanderson and Vickers' brother William owned a steel rolling operation. Edward's investments in the railway industry allowed him to gain control of the company, based at Millsands and known as Naylor Vickers and Co. It began life making steel castings and quickly became famous for casting church bells.
- 1863 the company moved to a new site in Sheffield on the River Don in Brightside.
- 1867 The company went public with a capital of £155,000 as Vickers, Sons and Company and gradually acquired more businesses, branching out into various sectors.
- 1868 Vickers began to manufacture marine shafts.
- 1872 They began casting marine propellers.
- 1882 They set up a forging press.
- 1888 Vickers produced their first armour plate.
- 1890 They produced their first artillery piece.
- 1897 Company name changed.
- 1901 Listed as railway point and crossing manufacturers of Don Works, Sheffield.
- 1911 Electrical Exhibition. Six-phase rotary converter. (Vickers of River Don Works, Sheffield).
- 1911 Company name changed.
- 1914 Specialities; Armour Plates, Guns, Marine Shafting, Railway Material, Electrical Machinery, Ships of War and Commerce, Motor Cars.
- 1927 See Aberconway for information on the company and its history.
- 1927 Also see Aberconway for information on the company and its history.
- 1937 Aircraft constructors. "Vernon" Aircraft. "Wellesley" and "Wellington" Aircraft.
- 1961 Vickers Ltd are the holding company for over 50 subsidiaries including Vickers-Armstrongs (Engineers), Vickers-Armstrongs, Vickers-Armstrongs (Shipbuilders), Vickers-Armstrongs (South Marston) and Vickers-Armstrongs (Tractors) with 60,000 employees in the group.
Shipbuilding
- 1897 Vickers entered naval shipbuilding with the purchase of Barrow Shipbuilding Co forming the Naval Construction Yard at Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria.
- 1897 It bought out the Barrow in Furness shipbuilder the Barrow Shipbuilding Co acquiring its subsidiary the Maxim Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition's Co at the same time, to become Vickers, Sons and Maxim. The yard at Barrow became the Naval Construction Yard. With these acquisitions, Vickers could now produce a complete selection of products, from ships and marine fittings to armour plate and a whole suite of ordnance.
- 1899 See 1899 Shipbuilding Statistics for detail of the tonnage produced.
- 1901 The Royal Navy's first submarine, Holland 1, was launched at the Naval Construction Yard.
- 1902 Vickers took a half share in the famous Clyde shipyard John Brown and Co.
- 1905 Further diversification occurred with the purchase of the car building activities of the Wolseley Sheep-Shearing Machine Company in 1905, which was set up as the Wolseley Tool and Motor Car Company.
- 1911 A controlling interest was acquired in Whitehead and Co, the torpedo manufacturers. The company name was changed to Vickers Limited and expanded its operations into aircraft manufacture by the formation of Vickers Ltd (Aviation Department).
- 1914 The company employed 22,000 people.
- 1919 The British Westinghouse electrical company was taken over to become the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company; Metrovick. At the same time they came into Metropolitan's railway interests.
- 1920 Solid injection oil engines for the 'Narragansett'. Details in The Engineer.
- 1920 May. Quick return broaching machine. Details and illustrations in The Engineer.
- 1924 Advert as engineers and shipbuilders with works at; River don Works at Sheffield; Dartford, Erith, Crayford and Weybridge and the Naval Construction Works at Barrow.
- 1926 Wolseley was sold to the Nuffield Organisation.
- 1927 Vickers merged with the Tyneside based engineering company Armstrong Whitworth to become Vickers-Armstrong.
- 1977 This yard later passed into the hands of the nationalised British Shipbuilders in 1977, was privatised as Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd (VSEL) in 1986 and remains in operation to this day as BAE Systems Submarines.
Weapons
- Vickers manufactured and sold the Maxim machine gun forming a partnership with its inventor.
- 1897 They later took over the company for £1.3 million, and in the same year the Naval Construction and Armaments Company was bought at the bargain price of £425,000. They improved the design as the Vickers machine gun, which was the last major design Hiram Maxim himself worked on. It became the standard machine gun of the British Empire and Commonwealth, serving for some 50 years in the British Army. It also re-worked in literally dozens of different cartridge sizes and sold all over the world, and was scaled up to larger calibres, particularly for the Royal Navy as a 0.5 inch model).
- Vickers was involved in the production of numerous firearms. John Pedersons design for a semi-automatic rifle was trialled by the British in the inter-war period (between WW1 and 2). The British version of the rifle was made by Vickers, and as result this version of the Pedersen rifle is usually called the Vickers Rifle.
- In the interwar period Vickers worked on several tanks designs. Medium Mark I and Mark II were adopted by the British Army. The Vickers 6-Ton tank was the most successful; being exported or built by other nations under licence. The Vickers A1E1 Independent tank design was never put into production but credited with influencing other nations. During the Second World War Vickers built large guns and tanks; the Valentine tank was a design that they had developed privately that was taken up.
Flight
- Vickers began work on a rigid airship for the British Admiralty in mid-1909 in Cavendish Dock, Cumbria, sadly it disintegrated upon its second trip out of a floating hangar on the evening of 23 September 1911. Further designs and difficulties followed although non-rigid machines including "Sea Scouts" (popularly called blimps) proved generally less troublesome than the larger rigid examples. Some models featured floating cars slung beneath them. Much experience in mooring techniques and swivelling motors was gathered despite the pressures of wartime.
- The last airship built at the Walney Island hangar was a small non-rigid reconnaissance machine for the Japanese government that first flew on 27 April 1921. A subsidiary called the Airship Guarantee Company Limited was formed under Sir Dennis Burney from 29 November 1923 (lasting until 30 November 1935) specifically to participate in the building of a massive six-engined commercial airship, the R100 in competition with the ill-fated R101. Their buildings were at Howden in Yorkshire. The R100 flew initially on 16 December 1929 and achieved some trans-Atlantic flights before scrapping in November 1931 by Elton, Levy and Company.
- 1911 Vickers formed Vickers Ltd (Aviation Department) in 1911 and produced one of the first aircraft designed to carry a machine gun, the FB5 (fighting biplane) Gun Bus. During World War I it produced the Valentia and Viking flying boats and the Vimy heavy bomber. An example of the latter became the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic Ocean non-stop, a converted Royal Air Force bomber (See 1919 in aviation.) The Vimy was later developed into the Virginia, a mainstay in the RAF during the interwar years. Vickers was a pioneer in producing airliners, early examples being converted from Vimy bombers.
- 1912. The company entered the Vickers No. 6 monoplane in the Larkhill Trials.
- 1920 See article of the Aircraft works at Weybridge in 'the Engineer'.
- There is a separate entry for Vickers Aircraft detailing the models.
Scientific Instruments
- 1915 Vickers Ltd acquired control of T. Cooke and Sons, a scientific instrument manufacturing business. They had long had an interest in the military side of Cooke products such as rangefinders, gunsights and surveying equipment, adapted to military needs.
- 1922 Cooke’s continued to expand in York and amalgamated with the long established instrument-making firm of Troughton and Simms of London (1824-1922).
- 1924 The new firm became Cooke, Troughton and Simms and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Vickers.
- 1939 Another factory was built on a larger site in Haxby Road and during the Second World War, of the 3,300 people employed by the firm, 1,400 were women.
- Post-WWII. After the war, microscopes, survey equipment and engineers' measuring instruments became the main products.
- 1963 Following the acquisition of the C. Baker Ltd microscope factory, the new company of Vickers Instruments was formed. This continued as a profitable business for many years, mainly selling microscopes, surveying instruments and micro measurement apparatus.
- 1980s The firm’s traditional skills in optics and mechanics were enhanced by electronic and software expertise and Quaestor, a new instrument for handling microchips, was produced as well as other high precision measuring apparatus and on the defence side, laser range finders for Vickers’ tanks.
See Also
Sources of Information
- [1] Wikipedia
- The Engineer of 29th October 1920 p444
- White's Directory of Sheffield and Rotherham, 1901 p979
- The Aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps (Military Wing) by J. M. Bruce. Published in 1982.
- Aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps (Military Wing) by J. M. Bruce. Published 1982 ISBN 0-370-30084-x
- The Engineer of 14th May 1920 p501
- The Engineer of 28th May 1920 p554 & p558
- 1924 Naval Annual Advert page xxiv
- The Engineer of 6th September 1911 p362
- 1937 The Aeroplane Directory of the Aviation and Allied Industries
- 1961 Guide to Key British Enterprises
- [2] University of York - University Library
- 1914 Whitakers Red Book
- AA. [3] Image courtesy of Aviation Ancestry