George Lanchester
| George Herbert Lanchester | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1874 |
| Died | 13 February 1970 |
| Nationality | English |
| Engineering career | |
| Significant advance | Automotive engineering |
George Herbert Lanchester, (1874 – 13 February 1970) was an English engineer. He was one of three brothers who played a leading role in the early development of the UK auto-industry.
In 1909, following the departure from full-time involvement with the company of his elder brother Frederick, George took over responsibility for the Lanchester Motor Company. Thereafter, while Frederick pursued his own glittering career as one of the leading automotive and aeronautical engineers of the time, it was George who ran the business the brothers had established together.
In 1889, at the age of 15, George started an apprenticeship with the Forward Gas Engine Company in Birmingham. His elder brother was already Works Manager with the same company. Four years later, setting a pattern for the future, Frederick left the company to pursue a full-time career as a research scientist, concentrating on the field that would later come to be known as aerodynamics. George, though still only 19, took over his brother's position as Works Manager.
Between 1894 and 1898 the brothers worked together on the development of a petrol (gasoline) powered passenger car. There being no established auto-component industry, a large number of components had to be designed and constructed from scratch, and much of this detailed work was undertaken by George, both for the first Lanchester car and for two subsequent mechanically identical prototypes.
In 1899 Frederick and George along with their middle brother Frank set up the Lanchester Engine Company. Frederick, as leader of the triumvirate, was chief designer and general manager while Frank took on the duties of a sales manager. George's role could be defined as that of Production Manager, albeit with a wider range of duties and responsibilities than that title implies. He quickly developed deep insights into the nascent techniques of auto-production methodology. His duties also extended to delivering cars to the more important customers, reportedly on one occasion suffering twenty tire bursts or punctures between Birmingham and Brighton on a single delivery job.
The three brothers were both the directors and the principal owners of the Lanchester Motor Company and there are suggestions that the relationship between them in these circumstances was sometimes a tense one. After Frederick left the company in 1909 to pursue a more independent career, George added "Chief Designer" to his portfolio of company responsibilities, though Frederick continued to provide input on a consultancy basis, and new models appearing in the aftermath of this change continued to reflect the elder brother's inputs more than those of George, being in large measure developments of existing 20 hp and 28 hp predecessors that had been introduced between 1904 and 1906. The Sporting Forty was the first Lanchester to feature what would become a 'normal' bonnet/hood and appeared in 1914. It seems to have been the first new model for which George himself had been principally responsible, though here too he had less than a totally free hand, having reluctantly agreed to a requirement from fellow directors to incorporate a side-valve engine because that mimicked the engine design competitor manufacturers were using at the time. In any event, for the United Kingdom 1914 was the year the First World War broke out and only six of these models had been sold before the plant was switched over to war production.
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