Daniel Nicol Dunlop

Daniel Nicol Dunlop (28 December 1868, Kilmarnock, Scotland — 30 May 1935, London) was a Scottish entrepreneur, founder of the World Power Conference and other associations, and a theosophist-turned-anthroposophist. He was the father of artist Ronald Ossory Dunlop.

Dunlop was born on 28 December 1868 in Kilmarnock as the only child of Alexander Dunlop and Catherine Nicol (1847–1873). His father was an architect and a Quaker preacher. He lost his mother at the age of five and was brought up by his grandfather on the Isle of Arran, where he learnt the trade of fishing. After his grandfather died in turn, he returned to his father in Kilmarnock once again, attending the local school. On completing his schooling, he did an apprenticeship with an engineering company in Ardrossan, Ayrshire in western Scotland.

After some differences of opinion with his father, he left home in 1886, taking a job in a bicycle shop in Glasgow. He moved to Dublin 1889, working for a tea and wine merchant, where he befriended the poets Æ (George William Russell) and William Butler Yeats, and became active in the Irish Theosophical Society. He was also known to James Joyce, and gets a mention in Ulysses.

In 1891 he married Eleanor Fitzpatrick (ca. 1867–1932); becoming the father of three children, Ronald Ossory Dunlop, a well-known painter and daughters Edith and Aileen.

Dunlop moved to America, and in 1896 was employed by the American Westinghouse Electric Company, becoming later assistant manager, and then manager of its European Publicity Department. In 1899 he returned to Britain with his family in this capacity. In 1911, with Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti and others, Dunlop helped to found the British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers' Association (BEAMA) in London, which still exists today. While Ferranti became its first chairman (to 1913) Dunlop was at first its secretary and later its director. A year of two after World War I, Dunlop began to organize the World Power Conference, the precursor to the World Energy Council, which met for the first time on 11 July 1924 and of which he was elected chairman. Towards the close of his life he was elected independent chairman of the Electrical Fair Trading Council and chairman of the executive council of the World Power Conference.

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