| Frederick W. Lanchester | |
| Nationality: | English |
| Birth Date: | 23 October 1868 |
| Birth Place: | 18 Alma Square, St John's Wood, London |
| Death Place: | Birmingham |
| Significant Advance: | |
| Significant Awards: | |
| Parents: | Henry Jones Lanchester |
Frederick William Lanchester LLD, Hon FRAeS, FRS[1] (23 October 1868 – 8 March 1946), was an English polymath and engineer who made important contributions to automotive engineering and to aerodynamics, and co-invented the topic of operations research.
Lanchester became a pioneer British motor-car builder, a hobby which resulted in his developing a successful car company, and is considered one of the "big three" English car engineers—alongside Harry Ricardo and Henry Royce.
Lanchester was born in St John's Wood, London to Henry Jones Lanchester (1834–1914), an architect, and his wife Octavia (1834–1916),[2] a tutor of Latin and mathematics. He was the fourth of eight children; his older brother Henry Vaughan Lanchester also became an architect; his younger sister Edith Lanchester was a socialist and suffragette; and his brothers George Herbert Lanchester and Frank joined him in forming the Lanchester Motor Company.
When he was a year old, his father relocated the family to Brighton, and young Frederick attended a preparatory school and a nearby boarding school, where he did not distinguish himself. He himself, thinking 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 Kensington College, which is now part of Imperial College. 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 acquired a job as a Patent Office draughtsman for £3 a week. About this time he registered a patent for an isometrograph, a draughtsman's instrument for hatching, shading and other geometrical design work.[3]
In 1919, at the age of fifty-one, Lanchester married Dorothea Cooper, the daughter of Thomas Cooper, the vicar of St Peter's Church in Field Broughton in Lancashire. The couple relocated to 41 Bedford Square, London, but in 1924 Lanchester built a house to his own design (Dyott End) in Oxford Road, Moseley, Birmingham. The couple remained there for the rest of their life together but did not have any children.[4]
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1922,[1] and in 1926 the Royal Aeronautical Society awarded him a fellowship and a gold medal.[5]
In 1925 Lanchester founded a company named Lanchester Laboratories Ltd., to perform industrial research and development work. Although he developed an improved radio and gramophone speaker, he was unable to market it successfully because of the Great Depression.[6] He continued, overworking, until in 1934 his health failed and the company was forced to close. He was diagnosed eventually with Parkinson's disease and was reportedly much grieved that this, along with cataracts in both eyes, prevented him from "doing any official job" during the Second World War.[7]
He was awarded gold medals by the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1941 and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1945.
Although he achieved his fame by his creative brilliance as an engineer, Frederick Lanchester was a man of diverse interests, blessed with a fine singing voice.[7] Using the pseudonym of Paul Netherton-Herries he published two volumes of poetry.[7]
Lanchester, who had never been successful commercially, lived the remainder 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.[3]
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 included 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 to his job. 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 operate.
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 3bhp, 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.[3]
Lanchester began to find the conflict between his job as works manager and his research work irksome. Therefore, in 1893, he resigned his job in favour of his younger brother George. At about the same time, he produced a second engine type similar in design to his previous one but operating on benzene at 800 rpm. An important part of his new engine was the revolutionary carburettor, for mixing the fuel and air correctly. His invention was known as a wick carburettor, because fuel was drawn into a series of wicks, from where it was vapourised. He patented this invention in 1905.
Lanchester installed his new petrol engine in a flat-bottomed launch, which the engine drove via a stern paddle wheel. Lanchester built the launch in the garden of his home in Olton, Warwickshire. The boat was launched at Salter's slipway in Oxford in 1904, and was the first motorboat built in Britain.[3]
Having put a petrol engine in a boat, the next logical step was to use it for road transport. Lanchester set about designing a four-wheeled vehicle to be driven by a petrol engine. He designed a new petrol engine of 51NaN1, with two crankshafts rotating in opposite directions, for exemplary smoothness,[8] and air cooling by way of vanes mounted on the flywheel.[9] There was a revolutionary[9] epicyclic gearbox (years before Henry Ford adopted it)[9] giving two forward speeds plus reverse, and which drove the rear wheels via chains. With a walnut body, it seated three, side by side.[9] (By contrast, Rudolf Egg's tricycle had a 3 hp (2.2 kW) 402 cc