Vickers Ltd Research Articles

A flight of the imagination: Mawson’s Antarctic aeroplane

When Douglas Mawson planned his Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911–14) he took advantage of newly available technology. His proposal to use an aeroplane for reconnaissance of unexplored regions in Antarctica was an innovative strategy, a first in polar exploration. He ordered a French‐designed Robert Esnault‐Pelterie (REP) two‐seater monoplane from Vickers Ltd in England. When a test flight in Adelaide ended in a crash, Mawson was forced to revise his plans. He took the engine and fuselage south to use as a motorized sledge or “air‐tractor”. This paper details the monoplane’s history, including conflicting interpretations of the crash. It outlines the optimistic preparation for the aircraft’s alternative role as a motor sledge in Antarctica, its disappointing performance and its eventual abandonment near Mawson’s Huts at Commonwealth Bay. Finally, it documents clues that have prompted a renewed search for this important historical artefact. Summer projects to locate and salvage it, using ice‐penetrating radar and other detection methods, have been run in conjunction with other conservation projects conducted by the Mawson’s Huts Foundation. We draw on archival research and new discoveries to piece together the fragmented history of the AAE’s monoplane.

Negotiating Technology Transfers within Multinational Enterprises; Perspectives from Canadian History

This essay examines the processes through which technology and technological capabilities were transferred by parent companies to their foreign affiliates in Canada, focusing on three companies covering the period from the 1880s to the 1950s. The three companies are: Bell Telephone Co. of Canada, which was affiliated with American Bell/American Telephone & Telegraph during this period; Canadian Vickers Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the British firm, Vickers Ltd, from 1910 to 1927; and Canadian Industries Ltd (CIL) which was jointly owned by the American firm, Du Pont, and the British Company, Imperial Chemical industries Ltd, from 1910 to 1952. In each case the major factors affecting decisions involving transfers of technology were: the general strategic objectives of the parent firm(s); the role played by managers in the affiliated firm in negotiating for these transfers; and the degree of control exercised by the parent company over the Canadian enterprise.

Horizon

Following the success of the novel facility for the testing of aircraft tyre, wheel and brake units — the most advanced of its kind in the world — installed at the Birmingham factory of Dunlop Ltd in 1973, an order has been received for a similar equipment for use in a USSR research establishment in Moscow. Vickers Ltd will again be responsible for the design, installation and commissioning of the complete test facility, an important feature of which is a powerful and sophisticated electrical drive system designed and supplied by GEC Electrical Projects Ltd. This drive system incorporates a method of inertia simulation for which extensive patent protection has been granted in the UK and a broad, and which is now being considered for other applications.

Herbert John Gough, 1890-1965

Herbert John Gough’s name is one which will always be chiefly associated with the ‘fatigue of metals’, for it can be justly claimed he was one of the pioneers of research into this subject. Born on 26 April 1890 in Bermondsey, he was the second son of Henry James Gough, a civil servant in the Post Office, and of Mary Ann Gillis. His father, who had a delightful personality, was of very precise and meticulous habits from whom Gough probably gained many of his thorough and accurate ways. It is understood, however, Gough was the first in his family to be attracted to engineering and/or science. He first attended primary school in Ealing and afterwards at the Regent Street Polytechnic Technical School from which he proceeded to University College School by gaining a studentship. At school he was very fond of games, particularly football and boxing. For a time he was an L.C.C. pupil teacher but found teaching with no other outlet incompatible with his temperament and took up an apprenticeship with Messrs Vickers, Sons and Maxim from 1909-1913, followed by a year as a designer draughtsman on naval and military weapons and other armament with Vickers Ltd. During this pre-war period he obtained an Honours B.Sc. degree in the faculty of Engineering of London University and in 1914 joined the scientific staff of the engineering department at the National Physical Laboratory, where he began his first study of fatigue of metals under the tutelage of Stanton and Bairstow.