Brush Electrical Machines is a manufacturer of electrical generators typically for

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 ...

and

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 ...

driven applications. The main office is based at

Loughborough Loughborough ( ) is a market town in the Charnwood (borough), Charnwood Borough of Leicestershire, England; it is the administrative centre of Charnwood Borough Council. At the United Kingdom 2021 census, the town's built-up area had a popula ...

Leicestershire Leicestershire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It is bordered by Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire to the north, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire to the south-east, Warw ...

, UK.

History

Charles Francis Brush, born in

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

in 1849, founded the Brush Electric Light Company, which stayed in business in the U.S. until 1889 when it was sold to the Thomson-Houston Company making Brush a wealthy man. In 1880, the Anglo-American Brush Electric Light Corporation was established in

Lambeth Lambeth () is a district in South London, England, which today also gives its name to the (much larger) London Borough of Lambeth. Lambeth itself was an ancient parish in the county of Surrey. It is situated 1 mile (1.6 km) south of Charin ...

, London. Its formation was to exploit the invention of Brush's first

electric Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...

dynamo "Dynamo Electric Machine" (end view, partly section, ) A dynamo is an electrical generator that creates direct current using a commutator. Dynamos employed electromagnets for self-starting by using residual magnetic field left in the iron cores ...

in 1876. As the business grew, due to the demand for new electrical apparatus, larger premises were sought, and in 1889 the corporation moved 100 miles north into the newly acquired Falcon Engine and Car Works at

under the new name, Brush Electrical Engineering Company Limited. In 1914, the company began manufacturing Ljungstrom steam turbines under licence. Over the next sixty years, the business grew by acquisitions, until in 1957, the Brush companies were incorporated into the

Hawker Siddeley Hawker Siddeley was a group of British manufacturing companies engaged in list of aircraft manufacturers, aircraft production. Hawker Siddeley combined the legacies of several British aircraft manufacturers, emerging through a series of mergers ...

Group. Within the group, the company manufactured a vast range of electrical products, including turbo generators, salient pole machines, induction motors, traction motors and generators, traction locomotives, switchgear, transformers and fuses. In November 1991 Hawker Siddeley Electric Power Group was subject to a successful hostile takeover bid of £1.5 billion from

BTR plc BTR plc was a British Multinational Corporation, multinational industrial Conglomerate (company), conglomerate company. It was headquartered in London, England. The company was originally founded in 1924 as the British Goodrich Rubber Co. Ltd ...

, a large engineering conglomerate. In November 1996 the FKI Group of Companies acquired the Hawker Siddeley Electric Power Group from BTR for a price of £182 million. On 1 July 2008 Melrose plc, a specialist investor in the manufacturing industry, bought FKI. During the last 125 years, various Brush companies (Brush Switchgear, Brush Transformers,

Brush Traction Brush Traction was a manufacturer and maintainer of railway locomotives in Loughborough, England whose operations have now been merged into the Wabtec company's Doncaster UK operations. History Hughes' Locomotive & Tramway Engine Wor ...

and Brush Control Gear) have existed on the Falcon Works site, but throughout this period Brush Electrical Machines Ltd manufacturing generators and motors has always been the largest company. Over 5,000 staff were employed on the site during the 1960s and 70s.

The following products are manufactured by Brush:
* Air-cooled turbo generators in the range of 20 to 300MVA * Turbomotors from 10 to 100MW * Associated control equipment In 2022, Brush Electrical Machines became a part of Baker Hughes.

Aircraft manufacture

In 1915, Brush Electrical was one of a number of companies outside the established aviation contractors selected by the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

to receive orders for aircraft to meet the expanding needs of the

Royal Naval Air Service The Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) was the air arm of the Royal Navy, under the direction of the Admiralty (United Kingdom), Admiralty's Air Department, and existed formally from 1 July 1914 to 1 April 1918, when it was merged with the British ...

. Brush completed 650 aircraft by the end of 1919, including 400

Avro 504 The Avro 504 is a single-engine biplane bomber made by the Avro, Avro aircraft company and under licence by others. Production during World War I totalled 8,970 and continued for almost 20 years, making it the most-produced aircraft of any kind ...

s and 142 Short Type 184s. It also built de Havilland Dragon Rapides during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, taking over production from

de Havilland The de Havilland Aircraft Company Limited (pronounced , ) was a British aviation manufacturer established in late 1920 by Geoffrey de Havilland at Stag Lane Aerodrome Edgware on the outskirts of North London. Operations were later moved to ...

in 1943 and building 346 aircraft (47.5% of the total number produced) by the time production ended in 1945.Robertson 1970, pp. 396–398.Jackson 1987, p. 366.

References

*Jackson, A. J. ''De Havilland Aircraft since 1909''. London: Putnam, Third edition, 1987. . *Robertson, Bruce. "Brush-built Aircraft, 1915-1919". ''Air Pictorial'', November 1970, Vol. 32 No. 11. pp. 396–398.

External links

Brush Electrical Machines website
*

Collection of historical documents/photographs on the origins of Brush companies in the U.S. and UK
Baker Hughes Acquires Power Generation Division of BRUSH Group
press release {{Melrose plc Companies based in Loughborough Engineering companies of the United Kingdom Electrical engineering companies of the United Kingdom Manufacturing companies of the United Kingdom Hawker Siddeley

History

Aircraft manufacture

See also

References

External links