Frederick William Lanchester was born on October 23, 1868, and died on March 8, 1946. He was an English expert in many fields and an engineer who made significant contributions to car engineering and aerodynamics. He also helped create the field of operations research.

Lanchester became one of the first people in Britain to build cars. This interest led to him constructing the first car in Britain in 1895 and starting a successful car company.

Many of the ideas Lanchester developed are now commonly used in the car industry.

Biography

Frederick Lanchester was born in 18 Alma Square, St John's Wood, London, to Henry Jones Lanchester (1834–1914), an architect, and his wife, Octavia (1834–1916), who taught 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. His brothers George Herbert Lanchester and Frank joined him in starting the Lanchester Motor Company.

When Frederick was one year old, his family moved to Brighton. He attended a preparatory school and a nearby boarding school, where he did not stand out. Later, he recalled that "it seemed that Nature was conserving his energy." However, he won a scholarship to the Hartley Institution in Southampton and earned another scholarship to Kensington College, now part of Imperial College. He took evening classes at Finsbury Technical School to learn more about applied engineering. Unfortunately, he left school without a formal qualification.

In 1888, after finishing his education, Frederick worked as a Patent Office draughtsman for £3 a week. Around this time, he registered a patent for an isometrograph, a tool used by draughtsmen for hatching, shading, and other design work.

In 1919, at the age of fifty-one, Lanchester married Dorothea Cooper, the daughter of Thomas Cooper, a vicar in Lancashire. The couple moved to 41 Bedford Square, London, but in 1924, Lanchester built a house he designed (Dyott End) on Oxford Road, Moseley, Birmingham. They lived there for the rest of their lives but had no children.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1922. In 1926, the Royal Aeronautical Society awarded him a fellowship and a gold medal.

In 1925, Lanchester founded Lanchester Laboratories Ltd. to conduct industrial research and development. He created an improved radio and gramophone speaker, but the Great Depression made it difficult to sell his invention successfully. He worked hard until 1934, when his health worsened, and the company closed. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and was upset that his illness and vision loss prevented him from working during World War II.

In 1941, the Institution of Civil Engineers awarded him a gold medal. In 1945, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers also gave him a gold medal.

Although Lanchester became famous for his engineering skills, he had many other interests. He had a strong singing voice and published two poetry books under the name Paul Netherton-Herries.

Lanchester never achieved commercial success and lived in difficult financial conditions for the rest of his life. With the help of charity, he stayed in his home, Dyott End. He died at his home on 8 March 1946.

Work

In late 1888, Lanchester began working as an assistant works manager for the Forward Gas Engine Company in Saltley, Birmingham. His employment contract included a rule that any technical improvements he made would belong to the company. Lanchester removed this rule before signing the contract. This decision was wise, as in 1889 he invented and patented a Pendulum Governor to control engine speeds. He earned ten shillings for each governor installed on a Forward Engine. In 1890, he also patented a Pendulum Accelerometer to measure the acceleration and braking of road and rail vehicles.

After the current works manager passed away, Lanchester was promoted to the position. He then designed a new gas engine larger and more powerful than any the company had made before. The engine was vertical with horizontal, opposed poppet valves for intake and exhaust. It had a low compression ratio but was efficient to operate.

In 1890, Lanchester patented a self-starting device for gas engines. He later sold the rights to this invention to the Crossley Gas Engine Company for a large amount of money.

He rented a small workshop near the Forward Company’s factory and used it for his own experiments. In this workshop, he built a small vertical single-cylinder gas engine producing 3 horsepower (2.2 kW) and running at 600 revolutions per minute. This engine was connected directly to a dynamo, which Lanchester used to light the company’s office and part of the factory.

Lanchester found it difficult to balance his job as works manager with his research work. In 1893, he resigned and handed his position to his younger brother, George. Around the same time, he created a second engine similar to his earlier design but powered by benzene at 800 rpm. A key part of this engine was a new type of carburetor, called a wick carburetor, which used wicks to draw fuel and vaporize it. He patented this invention in 1905.

Lanchester installed his new petrol engine in a flat-bottomed boat, which used a stern paddle wheel for movement. He built the boat in the garden of his home in Olton, Warwickshire. The boat was launched in Oxford in 1904 and was the first motorboat made in Britain.

After successfully putting a petrol engine in a boat, Lanchester began designing a four-wheeled vehicle powered by a petrol engine. He created a new petrol engine producing 5 horsepower (3.7 kW) with two crankshafts rotating in opposite directions for smooth operation. The engine was air-cooled using vanes on the flywheel. It included a revolutionary epicyclic gearbox, which provided two forward speeds and reverse, and drove the rear wheels via chains. The car had a walnut body and could seat three people side by side.

Lanchester’s car was completed in 1895 and tested in 1896, but it had issues with power and transmission. He then designed a new 8 horsepower (6 kW) air-cooled engine with two horizontally opposed cylinders and two crankshafts. He also redesigned the epicyclic gearbox and combined it with the engine. A driveshaft connected the gearbox to a live axle. These upgrades were added to the original 1895 car.

As work on the car progressed, Lanchester moved his business to larger workshops in Ladywood Road, Fiveways, Birmingham. He also sold his house to fund his research. A second car was built with the same engine and transmission but included Lanchester’s own design of cantilever suspension. This car was completed in 1898 and won a gold medal for its design and performance at the Automobile Exhibition and Trials in Richmond. It became known as the Gold Medal Phaeton.

In 1898, Lanchester designed a water-cooled version of his 8 horsepower (6 kW) engine, which powered a boat with a propeller. In 1900, the Gold Medal Phaeton participated in the first Royal Automobile Club 1,000 Miles Trial and completed the course successfully after one mechanical failure.

In December 1899, Lanchester and his brothers founded the Lanchester Engine Company to build cars for the public. A factory was purchased in Montgomery Street, Sparkbrook, Birmingham, known as the Armourer Works. In his new factory, Lanchester designed a new ten horsepower twin-cylinder engine. He used a worm drive transmission and created a machine to cut worm gears, which he patented in 1905. The machine produced all of the Lanchester worm gears for 25 years. He also introduced splined shafts and couplings instead of keys and keyways, another innovation he patented. The car’s back axle used roller bearings, which Lanchester designed machines to produce. The engine was placed between the two front seats, and the car used a side-mounted tiller instead of a steering wheel. The transmission included a system similar to modern disc brakes that clamped the clutch disc for braking. On December 1, 1902, Lanchester was awarded Patent No. 26,407 for the disc brake.

The new 10 horsepower car was introduced in 1901 and produced until 1905 with minor design changes. He became friends with Rudyard Kipling and sent him experimental models to test. In 1905, Lanchester produced a 20 horsepower four-cylinder engine, and in 1906, a 28 horsepower six-cylinder engine. Although Sir Henry Royce had already addressed crankshaft torsional oscillation, Lanchester studied the problem scientifically and invented a torsional crankshaft vibration damper. His design, patented in 1907, used a secondary flywheel connected to the crankshaft with a viscous clutch. Around the same time, he also patented a harmonic balancer to cancel unbalanced forces in a four-cylinder engine using two balance weights rotating in opposite directions.

The Lanchester Engine Company sold about 350 cars between 1900 and 1904 but became bankrupt due to poor management. The company was reformed as The Lanchester Motor Company. During this time, Lanchester experimented with fuel injection, turbochargers, added steering wheels in 1907, and invented the accelerator pedal to help control engine operation. He also created detachable wire wheels, pressure-fed bearings, stamped steel pistons, piston rings, hollow connecting rods, torsional vibration dampers for six-cylinder engines, and harmonic balancers for four-cylinder engines.

Eventually, Lanchester grew frustrated with the company’s directors and resigned as general manager in 1910, becoming a part-time consultant and technical adviser. His brothers, George and Frank, took over technical and administrative roles.

In 1909, Lanchester

Legacy

Lanchester was admired by many engineers for his intelligence, but he did not have the skills to turn his ideas into money. James Watt had a helpful business partner named Matthew Boulton, who handled business matters. Lanchester did not have this kind of support. Most of his career, he did not have enough financial help to develop his ideas or do research as he wanted. Despite this, he made many important contributions in different areas. He wrote over sixty technical papers for various institutions and groups, and received awards from several organizations.

Lanchester’s papers, notebooks, and other materials are kept in several archive collections, such as those at Coventry University, the University of Southampton Library, Birmingham Museums Trust, the National Aerospace Library, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Cambridge University’s Churchill Archives Centre, and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.

Memorials

In 1970, several colleges in Coventry came together to create Lanchester Polytechnic, named after Frederick Lanchester. It was later called Coventry Polytechnic in 1987 and became Coventry University in 1992.

The Lanchester Library at Coventry University opened in 2000. It is named to honor Frederick Lanchester and the earlier name of the university, Lanchester Polytechnic. The library’s design shows how it works, similar to Frederick Lanchester’s own inventions.

The building uses energy-efficient features, such as light wells and exhaust stacks, to allow air to move naturally through the structure, providing ventilation without needing fans or heating systems.

In the Bloomsbury, Heartlands area of Birmingham, there is an open-air sculpture called the Lanchester Car Monument. Designed by Tim Tolkien, it stands on the site where the Lanchester company built their first four-wheel, petrol car in 1895. The sculpture was unveiled in 1995 by Mrs. Marjorie Bingeman, daughter of Frank Lanchester, and Chris Clark, a Lanchester historian.

• Green plaque in Moseley, Birmingham
• Sculpture by Tim Tolkien

Selected publications

• Lanchester, Frederick W. (1906). Aerial Flight, Vol. 1: Aerodynamics. Published in London by Archibald Constable & Co.
• Lanchester, Frederick W. (1908). Aerial Flight, Vol. 2: Aerodonetics. Published in London by Archibald Constable & Co.
• Lanchester, Frederick W. (1916). Aircraft in Warfare: The Dawn of the Fourth Arm. Published in London by Constable and Company.
• Netherton-Herries, Paul (1935). The Centenarian: a Lakeland story told in verse. Published in Birmingham by Cornish Brothers. Limited edition of 640 copies.
• Netherton-Herries, Paul (1936). A King's Prayer and Other Poems. Published in Birmingham by the author for private distribution.