Metropolitan-Vickers
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Metropolitan-Vickers, Metrovick, or Metrovicks, was a British heavy
electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
company of the early-to-mid 20th century formerly known as British Westinghouse. Highly diversified, it was particularly well known for its industrial electrical equipment such as generators,
steam turbine A steam turbine or steam turbine engine is a machine or heat engine that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work utilising a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Sir Charles Par ...
s,
switchgear In an electric power system, a switchgear is composed of electrical disconnect switches, fuses or circuit breakers used to control, protect and isolate electrical equipment. Switchgear is used both to de-energize equipment to allow work to ...
,
transformer In electrical engineering, a transformer is a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple Electrical network, circuits. A varying current in any coil of the transformer produces ...
s,
electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...
and railway traction equipment. Metrovick holds a place in history as the builders of the first commercial
transistor computer A transistor computer, now often called a second-generation computer, is a computer which uses discrete transistors instead of vacuum tubes. The first generation of electronic computers used vacuum tubes, which generated large amounts of heat, w ...
, the Metrovick 950, and the first British axial-flow
jet engine A jet engine is a type of reaction engine, discharging a fast-moving jet (fluid), jet of heated gas (usually air) that generates thrust by jet propulsion. While this broad definition may include Rocket engine, rocket, Pump-jet, water jet, and ...
, the Metropolitan-Vickers F.2. Its factory in
Trafford Park Trafford Park is an area of the metropolitan borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, opposite Salford Quays on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, southwest of Manchester city centre and north of Stretford. Until the la ...
,
Manchester Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...
, was for most of the 20th century one of the biggest and most important heavy engineering facilities in Britain and the world.


History

Metrovick started as a way to separate the existing British Westinghouse Electrical and Manufacturing Company factories from United States control, which had proven to be a hindrance to gaining government contracts during the
First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
. In 1917 a holding company was formed to try to find financing to buy the company's properties.Scott (1963). pp. 140–142. In May 1917, control of the holding company was obtained jointly by the Metropolitan Carriage, Wagon and Finance Company, of
Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...
, chaired by Dudley Docker, and Vickers Limited, of
Barrow-in-Furness Barrow-in-Furness is a port town and civil parish (as just "Barrow") in the Westmorland and Furness district of Cumbria, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in the county of Lancashire, it was incorporated as a municipal borou ...
.Gillham (1988), Chapter 2: ''The Manufacturers''. On 15 March 1919, Docker agreed terms with Vickers, for Vickers to purchase all the
shares In financial markets, a share (sometimes referred to as stock or equity) is a unit of equity ownership in the capital stock of a corporation. It can refer to units of mutual funds, limited partnerships, and real estate investment trusts. Sha ...
of the Metropolitan Carriage, Wagon and Finance Company for almost £13 million.Scott (1963). Appendix A. On 8 September 1919, Vickers changed the name of the British Westinghouse Electrical and Manufacturing Company to Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Company. The immediate post-war era was marked by low investment and continued labour unrest. Fortunes changed in 1926 with the formation of the Central Electricity Board which standardised electrical supply and led to a massive expansion of electrical distribution, installations, and appliance purchases. Sales shot up, and 1927 marked the company's best year to date. On 15 November 1922 the
BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
was registered and the BBC's Manchester station, 2ZY, was officially opened on 375 metres transmitting from the Metropolitan Vickers Electricity works in Old Trafford. In 1921, they bought a site at Attercliffe Common in
Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, situated south of Leeds and east of Manchester. The city is the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its so ...
, which was used to manufacture traction motors. By 1923, it had its own engineering department, and was making complete locomotives and electric delivery vehicles.


BTH merger and transition to AEI

In 1928 Metrovick merged with the rival British Thomson-Houston (BTH), a company of similar size and product lineup. Combined, they would be one of the few companies able to compete with Marconi or
English Electric The English Electric Company Limited (EE) was a British industrial manufacturer formed after World War I by amalgamating five businesses which, during the war, made munitions, armaments and aeroplanes. It initially specialised in industrial el ...
on an equal footing. In fact the merger was marked by poor communication and intense rivalry, and the two companies generally worked at cross purposes. The next year the combined company was purchased by the Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) holding group, who also owned Edison Swan (Ediswan); and Ferguson, Pailin & Co, manufacturers of electrical switchgear in Openshaw, Manchester. The rivalry between Metrovick and BTH continued, and AEI was never able to exert effective control over the two competing subsidiary companies. Problems worsened in 1929 with the start of the
Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
, but Metrovick's overseas sales were able to pick up some of the slack, notably a major railway electrification project in
Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
. By 1933 world trade was growing again, but growth was nearly upset when six Metrovick engineers were arrested and found guilty of
espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ...
and " wrecking" in
Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
after a number of turbines built by the company in and for the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
proved to be faulty. The British government intervened; the engineers were released and trade with Russia was resumed after a brief embargo. During the 1930s Metropolitan Vickers produced two dozen very large diameter (3m/10 ft) three-phase AC traction motors for the Hungarian railway's V40 and V60 electric locomotives. The 1640 kW rated power machinery, designed by
Kálmán Kandó Kálmán Kandó de Egerfarmos et Sztregova (''egerfarmosi és sztregovai Kandó Kálmán''; July 10, 1869 – January 13, 1931) was a Hungary, Hungarian engineer, the inventor of phase converter and a pioneer in the development of AC electric rai ...
, was paid for by British government economic aid. In 1935 the company built a 105 MW steam turbogenerator, the largest in Europe at that time, for the Battersea Power Station. In 1936 Metrovick started work with the
Air Ministry The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force and civil aviation that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the ...
on
automatic pilot An autopilot is a system used to control the path of a vehicle without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilots do not replace human operators. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allow ...
systems, eventually branching out to gunlaying systems and building
radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...
s the next year. In 1938 they reached an agreement with the Ministry to build a
turboprop A turboprop is a Gas turbine, gas turbine engine that drives an aircraft Propeller (aeronautics), propeller. A turboprop consists of an intake, reduction drive, reduction gearbox, gas compressor, compressor, combustor, turbine, and a propellin ...
design developed at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) under the direction of Hayne Constant. It is somewhat ironic that BTH, its erstwhile partners, were at the same time working with
Frank Whittle Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, (1 June 1907 – 8 August 1996) was an English engineer, inventor and Royal Air Force (RAF) air officer. He is credited with co-creating the turbojet engine. A patent was submitted by Maxime Guillaume in 1921 fo ...
on his pioneering jet designs.


Wartime aircraft production

In mid-1938, MV was awarded a contract to build Avro Manchester twin-engined heavy bombers under licence from A.V. Roe. As this type of work was very different from its traditional heavy engineering activities, a new factory was built on the western side of Mosley Road and this was completed in stages through 1940. There were significant problems producing this aircraft, not least being the unreliability of the Rolls-Royce Vulture engine and that the first 13 Manchesters were destroyed in a ''
Luftwaffe The Luftwaffe () was the aerial warfare, aerial-warfare branch of the before and during World War II. German Empire, Germany's military air arms during World War I, the of the Imperial German Army, Imperial Army and the of the Imperial Ge ...
'' bombing raid on
Trafford Park Trafford Park is an area of the metropolitan borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, opposite Salford Quays on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, southwest of Manchester city centre and north of Stretford. Until the la ...
on 23 December. Despite this the firm went on to complete 43 examples. With the design of the much improved four-engined derivative, the Avro Lancaster, MV switched production to that famous type, supplied with
Rolls-Royce Merlin The Rolls-Royce Merlin is a British Coolant#Liquids, liquid-cooled V12 engine, V-12 Reciprocating engine, piston aero engine of 27-litre (1,650 cu in) Engine displacement, capacity. Rolls-Royce Limited, Rolls-Royce designed the engine an ...
engines from the Ford
Trafford Park Trafford Park is an area of the metropolitan borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, opposite Salford Quays on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, southwest of Manchester city centre and north of Stretford. Until the la ...
shadow factory. Three hangars were erected on the southside of Manchester's Ringway Airport for assembly and testing of its Lancasters, before a policy switch was made to assembling them in a hangar at Avro's Woodford airfield. By the end of the war, MV had built 1,080 Lancasters. These were followed by 79 Avro Lincoln derivatives before remaining orders were cancelled and MV's aircraft production ceased in December 1945. In 1940 the turboprop effort was re-engineered as a pure jet engine after the successful run of Whittle's designs. The new design became the Metrovick F.2 and eventually flew in
1943 Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January 1 – WWII: The Soviet Union announces that 22 German divisions have been encircled at Stalingrad, with 175,000 killed and 137,650 captured. * January 4 ...
on a Gloster Meteor. Considered to be too complex to bother with, Metrovick then re-engineered the design once again to produce roughly double the power, while at the same time starting work on a much larger design, the Metrovick F.9 ''Sapphire''. Although the F.9 proved to be a winner, the Ministry of Supply nevertheless forced the company to sell the jet division to Armstrong Siddeley in 1947 to reduce the number of companies in the business. In addition to building aircraft, other wartime work included the manufacture of both Dowty and Messier undercarriages, automatic pilot units, searchlights and radar equipment. They also produced electric vans and lorries.


Metrovick postwar

The post-war era led to massive demand for electrical systems, leading to additional rivalries between Metrovick and BTH as each attempted to one-up the other in delivering ever-larger turbogenerator contracts. Metrovick also expanded its appliance division during this time, becoming a well known supplier of refrigerators and stoves. The design and manufacture of sophisticated scientific instruments, such as
electron microscope An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing it ...
s, and
mass spectrometer Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique that is used to measure the mass-to-charge ratio of ions. The results are presented as a '' mass spectrum'', a plot of intensity as a function of the mass-to-charge ratio. Mass spectrometry is us ...
s, became an important area of scientific research for the company. In 1947, a Metrovick G.1 Gatric
gas turbine A gas turbine or gas turbine engine is a type of Internal combustion engine#Continuous combustion, continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part (known as the gas gene ...
was fitted to the Motor Gun Boat ''MGB 2009'', making it the world's first
gas turbine A gas turbine or gas turbine engine is a type of Internal combustion engine#Continuous combustion, continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part (known as the gas gene ...
powered naval vessel. A subsequent marine gas turbine engine was the G.2 of 4,500 shp fitted to the Royal Navy Bold-class fast patrol boats '' Bold Pioneer'' and '' Bold Pathfinder'', which were built in 1953. The Bluebird K7 jet-propelled 3-point hydroplane in which Donald Campbell broke the 200 mph water speed barrier was powered with a Metropolitan-Vickers Beryl jet engine producing of thrust. The K7 was unveiled in late 1954. Campbell succeeded on Ullswater on 23 July 1955, where he set a record of , beating the previous record by some held by Stanley Sayres. Another major area of expansion was in the diesel locomotive market, where they combined their own generators and traction motors with third-party diesel engines to develop in 1950 the
Western Australian Government Railways X class The WAGR X class is a now-withdrawn class of diesel locomotives built by Beyer, Peacock and Company, Beyer, Peacock & Company and Metropolitan-Vickers, Bowesfield Works, Stockton-on-Tees for the Western Australian Government Railways (WAGR) bet ...
2-Do-2 locomotive and in 1958 the type 2 Co-Bo, later re-classified under the TOPS system as the British Rail Class 28. This diesel-electric locomotive was unusual on two counts; its Co-Bo wheel arrangement and its Crossley 2-Stroke diesel engine (evolved from a World War II marine engine). Intended as part the British Railways Modernisation Plan, the twenty-strong fleet saw service between Scotland and England before being deemed unsuccessful and withdrawn in the late 1960s. Metrovick also produced the CIE 001 Class (originally 'A' Class) from 1955, the first production mainline diesels in
Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
. Metropolitan Vickers also produced electrical equipment for the British Rail Class 76 (EM1), and British Rail Class 77 (EM2), 1.5 kV DC locomotives, built at Gorton Works for the
electrification Electrification is the process of powering by electricity and, in many contexts, the introduction of such power by changing over from an earlier power source. In the context of history of technology and economic development, electrification refe ...
of the Woodhead Line in the early 1950s. Larger but broadly similar locomotives were also supplied to the New South Wales Government Railways as its 46 class. The company also designed the British Rail Class 82, 25 kV AC locomotives built by Beyer, Peacock & Company in Manchester using Metrovick electrical equipment. The company also supplied electrical equipment for the British Rail Class 303 electric multiple units. In the 1950s, the company built a large
power transformer Power may refer to: Common meanings * Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work" ** Engine power, the power put out by an engine ** Electric power, a type of energy * Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events Ma ...
works at Wythenshawe, Manchester. The factory opened in 1957, and was closed by GEC in 1971, after which it was sold to the American compressor manufacturer Ingersoll Rand. In 1961, the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was invited to the company's factory at Trafford Park as part of his tour of Manchester. The rivalry between Metrovick and BTH was eventually ended in an unconvincing fashion when the AEI management eventually decided to rid themselves of both brands and be known as AEI universally, a change they made on 1 January 1960. This move was almost universally resented within both companies. Worse, the new brand name was utterly unknown to its customers, leading to a noticeable fall-off in sales and AEI's stock price.


General Electric Company (GEC) takeover

When AEI attempted to remove the doubled-up management structures, they found this task to be even more difficult. By the mid-1960s the company was struggling under the weight of two complete management hierarchies, and they appeared to be unable to control the company any more. This allowed AEI to be purchased by
General Electric Company The General Electric Company (GEC) was a major British industrial conglomerate involved in consumer and Arms industry, defence electronics, communications, and engineering. It was originally founded in 1886 as G. Binswanger and Company as an e ...
in 1967.


See also

* :Metropolitan-Vickers locomotives * Bowesfield Works * Metro-Vickers Affair * Metrovick electric vehicles


References


Bibliography

* *


Further reading

*


External links


"Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Co. Ltd. 1899-1949" by John Dummelow
250 pages of text and pictures. (This is a mirror of the original, which was accessed from https://web.archive.org/web/20050308065049/http://www.mvbook.org.uk/ ) {{Authority control Turbines Locomotive manufacturers of the United Kingdom Engineering companies of the United Kingdom Electrical engineering companies of the United Kingdom Defunct manufacturing companies of the United Kingdom Associated Electrical Industries Radar manufacturers Defunct companies based in Manchester Manufacturing companies based in Manchester Manufacturing companies established in 1899 Manufacturing companies disestablished in 1960 Defunct aircraft engine manufacturers of the United Kingdom Former defence companies of the United Kingdom Science and technology in the United Kingdom British companies established in 1899 British companies disestablished in 1960 1899 establishments in England 1960 disestablishments in England