Lanchester Interactive Archive: Discover A-Z

B - BSA take over the Lanchester Motor Company in 1931

Lanchester Motor Company was bought out by Birmingham Small Arms Ltd and managed by another BSA firm Daimler to save it from liquidation. It relocates to Daimler factory in Radford, Coventry. George Lanchester stays Chief Engineer. Frank transfers to London Sales Department.

C - Colour photography patent

In the same year (1895) that he developed the first all-British motor car and continued with his passion for aeronautics, Fred Lanchester somehow managed to find time to patent a method for ‘Photography in colours’.

The apparatus incorporated a grate of parallel opaque bars which were placed as close to the photograph’s subject as possible, with a prism placed close to the lens. The print was a black-and-white lantern slide that was viewed inside the camera in place of the photographic plate, and upon casting a white light onto the slide, it produced a coloured image that could be projected onto a screen.  His ideas were referenced by photography enthusiasts who later developed the concept further using different apparatus.

D - Disc Brakes

In December 1902 Fred patented an invention that offered ‘…an improved form of brake mechanism for power-propelled vehicles and…particularly to an improved construction of road wheel brake.’ The new system was featured in the Lanchester 18 h.p. model. See the original patent.

Unfortunately the system wasn’t a complete success – due to the state of the roads in the early 1900s the metal pads quickly wore down due to mud and dust. At that times roads were not tarmaced or concreted. However it was undoubtedly a farsighted design as the Jaguar racing team demonstrated the superiority of disc brakes in the 1953 Le Mans 24 hour race where cars had to frequently brake hard on the high speed course. Mass production of brake pads began with the 1955 Citroën DS and today brake discs are used almost every car on the road.

E - Epicyclic gearbox

In the days before synchromesh or automatic gearboxes, it was a real challenge for a driver to match the revolutions of the engine to make sure that the final drive gear matched the revolutions of the road wheels. Often there was a lot of scraping, grunting and crashing as drivers would attempt to change gear successfully.

A far superior device was the epicyclic or ‘planetary’ gearbox where a ‘sun’ gear would have ‘planet’ gears moving in different orbits to provide different ratios which were adopted from the very first Lanchester car in 1895.

They were incredibly smooth and when Henry Ford visited the Lanchester factory, he had never seen this before and he used the design in his Model T which sold over 15 million cars.

The epicyclic gearbox combined with a fluid flywheel transmission meant the driver could select any gear and start off smoothly before selecting another gear and moving into it equally smoothly.  Demonstrator driver Archie Millership would often change from reverse to first, to third and back again to amaze potential customers.

F - Fred’s fascinating family

Fred was born to the architect Henry Jones Lanchester and Octavia, a teacher of mathematics and Latin in 1868.  He was one of nine siblings, eight who survived into adulthood, the twin of his younger brother Frank dying shortly after he was born.
Frank and his younger brother George (see in the car above, next to Fred) were to work closely together with Fred, forming the “Unholy Trinity” thanks to their habit of working on Sundays building and developing cars and other machines.

Frank was a successful salesmen, going on to become a founder member of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and a friend to King George VI, showing him round Coventry during his trip in 1938.

Their elder brother Henry was also an architect, building magnificent palaces and motor houses in India for the maharajas as well as many prestigious buildings in Britain.

Their sister Edith (Biddy) Lanchester was a prominent suffragette and her daughter Elsa Lanchester became a Hollywood actress, playing ‘ The Bride of Frankstein’.

All in all, a tremendously talented and remarkable family!

G - Gliders

In June 1894 Fred presented a paper to the Birmingham Natural History and Philosophical Society entitled The Soaring of birds and the possibilities of mechanical flight. This was based upon years of experiments Fred and his brothers conducted.

They built a series of gliders and launched them from the first floor of the home on St Bernard’s Road, Olton. Meticulous records of the angles and trajectories were kept.

Over the next 50 years Fred would delve into the world of flight, coming up with theories and designs which we can see being used today.

H - Hybrid engines

As early as 1915 Fred was beginning to think about the possibilities hybrid petrol-electric engines offered. In fact he took a patent out in 1915 for an internal combustion engine, electric motor and a generator on one shaft. This was not developed further until the 1920s when Fred and his brother George began to investigate the possibilities further.

By 1925 Fred had taken out a final patent for what he called the ‘Petrelect’ system, or what we call today a hybrid engine. It followed the same principles of today’s hybrid engines.

I - Isometrograph

Have you ever had to draw a series of parallel lines or hatches on a drawing and got bored? Fred’s first job was working as a draughtsman in a patent agent’s office and experienced the same sense of dullness at this mundane, boring and repetitive role. He set to work thinking of an invention that could save time and invented the Isometrograph which he patented in November 1888 when he was just 20.

J - Jaguar to Lanchester

From the first all-British four-wheeled petrol car, to today’s performance luxury cars there is a connection of innovation and technology that flows through like letters through a stick of rock, spelling ‘Lanchester’.

The first Lanchesters were produced by the Lanchester Engine Company before it was declared bankrupt and reformed as the Lanchester Motor Company Limited in 1904.  In 1931 this company was taken over by BSA and moved to share the Daimler factory in Coventry.  The last Lanchester cars left the production line in 1956 but Daimler cars based on Lanchester designs continued for several years and eventually Daimler was itself was taken over by Jaguar.

The Lanchester Motor Company still exists today as a dormant company owned by Jaguar’s owers Tata, so the brand still stays alive at the heart of a vibrant automotive sucess story breaking new ground with cars like the electric i-Pace.

K - Kipling – early Lanchester owner, tester and admirer

Jungle Book author Rudyard Kipling was introduced to Lanchester cars in the early 1900s when Works Manager Max Lawrence drove a demonstration 10h.p. car to his sisters who had recently founded Roedean School near Brighton.

Kipling was a close neighbour to the school and already a steam car owner.  He was impressed by the Lanchester and ordered a 10 h.p. which George Lanchester delivered personally to him in early 1902.  During the 200 mile trip George suffered more than twenty punctures as the tyre technology of the time was not fully developed!

As a knowledgeable driver and owner, Rudhard Kipling often received new models for testing as the Lanchester brothers valued his opinion as an informed layman.  He also happily lent his words to advertisements promoting Lanchester cars.

L - Lanchester's Laboratories Limited

In 1923, Fred formed a new venture called Lanchester Laboratories Ltd, in partnership with Daimler. The company later produced sound equipment including speakers and radios designed by Fred, which were available by mail order. The Lanchester Company was the 1st European company to use cellulose paint.

M - Motor boat

In 1894, Fred wanted to test the engine destined for the first motor car but he was unable to try the advanced single cylinder engine on the road.  The Locomotive Act of 1865 required all road locomotives, which included cars, to travel at a maximum of 4 mph in the country and 2 mph in the city, as well as requiring a man carrying a red flag to walk in front of road vehicles hauling multiple wagons!

So he put the engine into a paddle-wheel driven flat-bottomed boat and transported from Fred’s garden where he built it with his brothers Frank and George to the River Thames at Oxford.

It was launched in the autumn of 1894 and became the first British motor boat, and was used for the next ten years on the Thames and then for at least ten more on the River Wey.

N - New Ventures

Fred was an entrepreneur as well as an inventor and designer and was involved in many companies (not always successful ones) during his lifetime.

Like many companies we know as car manufacturers today, Fred’s first venture was a bicycle component company ‘The Lanchester Brothers’ that made things like pedals and ball-bearings. It was short-lived however and closed in 1894.

The ‘Lanchester Engine Company Limited’ was founded in 1899 to produce the first of Fred’s designs for the road,  He was made General Manager, Works Manager, and Chief Designer and was paid £350 a year.

In 1904 this company was declared bankrupt but was reformed as the ‘Lanchester Motor Company Limited’.  It still exists today as a dormant company having been owned by BSA and then Daimler, which itself was taken over by Jaguar and now ultimately owned by Jaguar Landrover.

O - Optics and ophthalmology

Fred became interested in optics and ophthalmology and he met Robert Lockhart, Professor of Anatomy at Birmingham University, beginning a life-long friendship.

In 1933 Fred wrote a paper titled ‘Directional Fixity and the Transitory Visual Impression or Fleeting Image’. He continued to write to Professor Lockhart and exchange ideas on subjects like the ‘blind-spot’ and blending of colour in the eye.

P - Patents

Between 1888 and 1946 Fred Lanchester (and his brothers) successfully patented over 200 hundred inventions. They are all available to search in the patent area of the online archive but the sheer variety as well as quantity can be overwhelming!

His first invention – a draughtsman’s drawing aid to rule equidistant lines – was registered in November 1888 when he was just 22 years old. Automotive patents include power-steering from 1903, four-wheel-drive from 1904 and petrol-electric hybrid propulsion from 1910. But he didn’t stop there, with aeronautical patents preceding the Wright Brothers with ideas for fantastic flying machines from 1897 and even more bizarre creations including a rotating fireplace from his brother Frank!

Q - Queen Elizabeth

Lanchester cars have a long association with member of the Royal Family. Albert, Duke of York purchased a 40hp Lanchester limousine in 1925, establishing a long history of royal support for the Lanchester brand. The future George VI’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, made her first public appearance in this same car at only six weeks old. After the abdication crisis when King George ascended the throne Frank Lanchester was able to acquire a Royal Warrant for the Lanchester Motor Company.

Frank was held in such high esteem that he was chosen to welcome King George VI to Coventry when he arrived at Tile Hill Station, taking the King on a tour of the Shadow Factories that were being built in the run up to World War II in 1938. After the war the Royal Family continued to use Lanchester cars in a personal capacity with the press letting people know that Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh made use of a Eighteen saloon, GX 6 during their honeymoon.

Across the globe Lanchester’s proved popular with other royal familie is including several Maharajahs in India and Prince Bertil of Sweden who purchased a saloon in 1952.

R - Record-breaking racers

Although Fred was not really interested in racing, the powerful 40 h.p. chassis of the 1920s led several individuals to use the cars for records attempts, especially at the iconic Brooklands racing circuit.

Cars with a large 6.2 litre engine, streamlined, lightweight bodywork and names like ‘Hoieh-Wayaryah-Gointoo’, ‘Softly-Catch-Monkey’ and ‘Winni-Prap-Praps’ (because of the noise its engine made) were high profile celebrities of the time, racing against the likes of Malcolm Campbell.

Just 30 years after the first ever cars were produced, these amazing machines were able to average around 100mph over many hundreds of miles, testing components like high-speed tyres to their limits.

S - Sound Systems – Microphones, Amps and Loudspeakers

In the early 1930s Fred began to patent designs for sound systems, patenting designs for amplifiers, loudspeakers, gramophones and microphones through his company Lanchester Laboratories Ltd. Fred demonstrated his loudspeaker, which was intended to be used in large concert halls, to a journalist at his home on 23rd January 1929 who was impressed at the range of sound the ‘Euterpe-phone’ (pictured below) produced.

The venture had a slightly shaky start; a demonstration of the new technology at Birmingham Town Hall on 31st January 1929 didn’t quite have the impact he wanted! The Birmingham Post said that ‘…the musical results obtained…bore no comparison in point of quality with the reproduction one had been privileged to hear in Dr Lanchester’s own quite large music room.’

Fred continued to develop ideas for radios, gramophones, microphones and speaker in the early 1930s but Lanchester Laboratories Ltd. only made a small profit and the company’s buildings, land and contents were sold on 3rd May 1934.

T - Tank museum and the last Lanchester armoured car

The Lanchester Motor Company designed and manufactured armoured cars for the Ministry of Defence. They were sent to Belgium, used to rescue pilots after the battle of Ypres and later used on airfields in Britain.

The company also produced staff cars, trucks and over 450 aero-engines for use in the war effort.

U - Universities – Southampton, Birmingham and Coventry

Fred Lanchester enjoyed science and mathematics at school and was accepted by the Hartley Institution in Southampton (now the University of Southampton) at the age of 13, and had to wait a year before taking up his place.

After two years of studying he won a national scholarship to the combined Normal School of Science (later the Royal College of Science) and the Royal School of Mines in London. In his first two years he learned the fundamentals of physics and chemistry, but aged 20 he abandoned the course without taking his final exams.

This left him without qualifications and little money and his first job in a Patent Office for sixpence an hour provided him with his first inspiration for his own patent granted in 1888 for an isometrograph – a tool for ruling parallel lines.

Despite his many achievements Fred still lacked formal recognition of his talents until 1919 when he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by the University of Birmingham on the 18th September, just a couple of weeks after he married Dorothea.

In recognition of his achievements Lanchester College of Technology opened in 1961 named after Fred and became Lanchester Polytechnic in 1970. Finally it became Coventry University in 1992 and the Lanchester Library was opened in 2001.

V - Vortex theory of flight

Fred’s passion for flight began during a transatlantic trip when he observed the flight of birds gliding next to the boat on which he was travelling.  He was fascinated by the movement and the shape of their wings and began to develop a theory of flight based on the twisting flow of air or ‘vortex’ caused by the friction of the air moving over the slender shape of the wings.

Although it wasn’t fully understood at the time, this fundamental understanding of the way air flowed over surfaces would lead to many developments in aerodynamics and aeronautics in the following years.

Eventually it was exploited in modern aircraft to reduce drag and increase efficiency through the use of advanced winglets.

W - Wartime events that destroyed a piece of automotive history

In the Blitz of 1940 that affected so much of Coventry, in one evening a factory was decimated and the first all-British, four-wheeled petrol motor car was destroyed.

The 5hp Lanchester built in 1895 was the first all-British petrol four-wheel car and by the time BSA took over it had been moved to the Radford Works alongside other historic Daimler cars.

A museum had been built in 1939 and at the beginning of the war, the cars in the historic collection were moved out…except one, the 1895 Lanchester.

George Lanchester confirmed that it had been lost, although not bombed directly, destroyed by fire and its surviving metal sent to scrap. As well as this, all the drawings and paperwork for pre-1931 cars were also destroyed leading to accusations that BSA and Daimler officials did not care about the historic loss or their role in it.

Fred Lanchester himself wrote to his brother, venting his anger:

I am sorry to hear that the original Lanchester has been destroyed by enemy action. The Daimler was very careful to get their stock of cars out of the danger zone but did not care a damn about things that counted for more.

X - X-factor – relativity, radioactivity and the bomb

Fred’s interests went way beyond cars and aeroplanes into the fundamentals of astrophysics, space, time and gravity!

In 1921 he wrote his first paper on Relativity and followed up with his theory on ‘The Expansion of the Universe’ in 1934, and wrote a further 222 page book on Relativity in 1935. His understanding led him to criticise the likes of Einstein, but only in an attempt to clarify this complex subject.

He later wrote an appendix to this book on ‘Radio-activity’ concentrating on energy release from radium and other sources. He also attempted to explain his ideas about ‘The Atomic Bomb’ from the perspective of an outsider who was not part of the secret war effort.

Y - Yours very truly…Wilbur Wright

Fred’s interest in flight continued into the 20th century and he travelled to watch the Wright Brothers fly in France during their tour of Europe.

He wrote to them to share his ideas and Wilbur Wright replied on the 4th January 1909 treating Fred’s letter rather dismissively, preferring to ‘follow my usual plan, and let the truth make itself apparent in actual practice’.

Z - Zinc discs – materials for a battery

Fred’s notebooks often contain fascinating lists of components and materials including this one for a battery from 1905.

It includes:

• India rubber
• Zinc discs
• Copper ore
• KHO (Potassium Hydroxide)
• Hg (Mercury)
• Tie wires
• Paraffin wax

He later wrote an appendix to this book on ‘Radio-activity’ concentrating on energy release from radium and other sources. He also attempted to explain his ideas about ‘The Atomic Bomb’ from the perspective of an outsider who was not part of the secret war effort.