Frederick W. Lanchester Totally Explained

Everything about Frederick William Lanchester totally explained

Frederick William Lanchester, Hon FRAeS (October 23, 1868 - March 8, 1946) was an English polymath and engineer who made important contributions to automotive engineering, aerodynamics and co-invented the field of operations research. He was also a pioneer British motor car builder, a hobby he eventually turned into a successful car company, and is considered one of the "big three" English car engineers, the others being Harry Ricardo and Henry Royce.

Early life

Lanchester was born at Lewisham, London to Henry Jones Lanchester, an architect, and his wife Octavia, a tutor. He was the fourth of eight children. When he was a year old, his father moved the family to Brighton, and young Frederick attended a preparatory school and a nearby boarding school, where he didn't distinguish himself. He himself, looking back remarked that, “it seemed that Nature was conserving his energy”. However, he did succeed in winning a scholarship to the Hartley Institution, in Southampton, and after three years won another scholarship, to, what is now, part of Imperial College, Kensington. He supplemented his instruction in applied engineering by attending evening classes at Finsbury Technical School. Unfortunately, he ended his education without having obtained a formal qualification.
When he completed his education in 1888, he took a job as a Patent Office draughtsman for £3 a week. About this time he took out a patent for an isometrograph, a draughtsman’s instrument for hatching, shading and other geometrical design work.

Gas engines

Near the end of 1888, Lanchester went to work for the Forward Gas Engine Company of Saltley, Birmingham as assistant works manager. His contract of employment contained a clause stating that any technical improvements that he made would be the intellectual property of the company. Lanchester wisely struck this out before signing. This action was prescient, for in 1889 he invented and patented a Pendulum Governor to control engine speeds, for which he received a Royalty of ten shillings for each one fitted to a Forward Engine. In 1890 he patented a Pendulum Accelerometer, for recording the acceleration and braking of road and rail vehicles.
   After the death of the current works manager, Lanchester was promoted in his place. He then designed a new gas engine of greater size and power than any produced by the company before. The engine was a vertical one with horizontal, opposed poppet valves for inlet and exhaust. The engine had a very low compression ratio, but was very economical to run.
   In 1890 Lanchester patented a self-starting device for gas engines. He subsequently sold the rights for his invention to the Crossley Gas Engine Company for a handsome sum.
   He rented a small workshop next to the Forward Company’s works and used this for experimental work of his own. In this workshop, he produced a small vertical single cylinder gas engine of, running at 600 rpm This was coupled directly to a dynamo, which Lanchester used to light the Company’s office and part of the factory. and air cooling by way of vanes mounted on the flywheel. There was a revolutionary epicyclic gearbox (years before Ford adopted it) giving two forward speeds plus reverse, and which drove the rear wheels via chains. With a walnut body, it seated three, side by side. (By contrast, Rudolf Egg's tricycle had a 3 hp (2.2 kW) 402 cc .
   Lanchester's car was completed in 1895 and given its first test run in 1896, and proved to be unsatisfactory, being underpowered and having transmission problems. Lanchester designed a new 8 hp (6 kW) 2,895 cc (177 in³) air-cooled engine with two horizontally opposed cylinders, still with two crankshafts. He also re-designed the epicyclic gearbox and combined it with the engine. A driveshaft connected the gearbox to a live axle. The new engine and transmission were fitted to the original 1895 car.
   Lanchester had moved to larger workshops in Ladywood Road, Fiveways, Birmingham as work on the car progressed and had also sold his house to help finance the cost of his research. A second car was then built with the same engine and transmission but with Lanchester’s own design of cantilever suspension. This was completed in 1898 and won Gold Medal for its design and performance at the Automobile Exhibition and Trials at Richmond. It became known as the Gold Medal Phaeton.
   In 1898, Lanchester designed a water-cooled version of his engine, which was fitted to a boat, driving a propeller. In 1900 the Gold Medal Phaeton was entered for the first Royal Automobile Club 1,000 Miles Trial and completed the course successfully after one mechanical failure on route.
   Lanchester's Laws were originally applied practically in the United States to study logistics, where they developed into operations research (OR). Today OR techniques are widely used, perhaps most so in business.

The post-war company

After the war the Company introduced the more conventional Forty, a rival for the Rolls-Royce 40/50 hp; it was joined in 1924 by an overhead cam six. In 1921 Lanchester was the first company to export left-hand drive cars. Tinted glass was also introduced on these cars for the first time. A 4440 cc straight eight was launched at the 1928 Southport Rally, again with overhead cams: it proved to be the last "real" Lanchester, for in 1931 the company was acquired by Daimler, and Lanchesters became merely re-clothed Daimlers.

Marriage

In 1919, at the age of fifty-one, Lanchester married Dorothea Cooper, the daughter of Thomas Cooper, the vicar of St Peter’s Church at Field Broughton in Lancashire. The couple moved to 41 Bedford Square, London, but in 1924 Lanchester built a house to his own design (Dyott End) in Oxford Road, Moseley. The couple remained there for the rest of their life together but had no children.

Later life

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1922, and in 1926 the Royal Aeronautical Society awarded him a fellowship and a gold medal.
   In 1925 Lanchester founded a company called Lanchester Laboratories Ltd. This was to carry out industrial research and development work. Although he developed an improved radio and gramophone speaker, he was unable to market it successfully because of the recession. He carried on, overworking, until in 1934 his health failed and the firm was forced to close. He was eventually diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
   He was awarded gold medals by the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1941 and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1945.
   Lanchester, who had never been commercially successful, lived out the rest of his life in straitened circumstances, and it was only through charitable help that he was able to remain in his home. He died at his home, Dyott End, on 8 March 1946. This later became Coventry University.

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