Frederick Lanchester
Encyclopedia
Royal Aeronautical Society
The Royal Aeronautical Society, also known as the RAeS, is a multidisciplinary professional institution dedicated to the global aerospace community.-Function:...
(23 October 1868 – 8 March 1946) was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
polymath
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
and engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...
who made important contributions to automotive engineering
Automotive engineering
Modern automotive engineering, along with aerospace engineering and marine engineering, is a branch of vehicle engineering, incorporating elements of mechanical, electrical, electronic, software and safety engineering as applied to the design, manufacture and operation of motorcycles, automobiles,...
, aerodynamics
Aerodynamics
Aerodynamics is a branch of dynamics concerned with studying the motion of air, particularly when it interacts with a moving object. Aerodynamics is a subfield of fluid dynamics and gas dynamics, with much theory shared between them. Aerodynamics is often used synonymously with gas dynamics, with...
and co-invented the field of operations research
Operations research
Operations research is an interdisciplinary mathematical science that focuses on the effective use of technology by organizations...
.
He was also a pioneer British motor car builder, a hobby he eventually turned into a successful car company, and is considered one of the "big three" English car engineers, the others being Harry Ricardo
Harry Ricardo
Sir Harry Ricardo was one of the foremost engine designers and researchers in the early years of the development of the internal combustion engine....
and Henry Royce
Henry Royce
Sir Frederick Henry Royce, 1st Baronet, OBE was a pioneering car manufacturer, who with Charles Stewart Rolls founded the Rolls-Royce company.-Early life:...
.
Biography
Lanchester was born at LewishamLewisham
Lewisham is a district in South London, England, located in the London Borough of Lewisham. It is situated south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.-History:...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
to Henry Jones Lanchester, an architect, and his wife Octavia, a tutor. He was the fourth of eight children. When he was a year old, his father moved the family to Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
, and young Frederick attended a preparatory school and a nearby boarding school, where he did not distinguish himself. He himself, looking back remarked that, “it seemed that Nature was conserving his energy”. However, he did succeed in winning a scholarship to the Hartley Institution
University of Southampton
The University of Southampton is a British public university located in the city of Southampton, England, a member of the Russell Group. The origins of the university can be dated back to the founding of the Hartley Institution in 1862 by Henry Robertson Hartley. In 1902, the Institution developed...
, in Southampton
Southampton
Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...
, and after three years won another scholarship, to, what is now, part of Imperial College, Kensington
Kensington
Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...
. He supplemented his instruction in applied engineering by attending evening classes at Finsbury
Finsbury
Finsbury is a district of central London, England. It lies immediately north of the City of London and Clerkenwell, west of Shoreditch, and south of Islington and City Road. It is in the south of the London Borough of Islington. The Finsbury Estate is in the western part of the district...
Technical School. Unfortunately, he ended his education without having obtained a formal qualification.
When he completed his education in 1888, he took a job as a Patent Office
Patent office
A patent office is a governmental or intergovernmental organization which controls the issue of patents. In other words, "patent offices are government bodies that may grant a patent or reject the patent application based on whether or not the application fulfils the requirements for...
draughtsman for £3 a week. About this time he took out a patent for an isometrograph, a draughtsman’s instrument for hatching, shading and other geometrical design work.
In 1919, at the age of fifty-one, Lanchester married Dorothea Cooper, the daughter of Thomas Cooper, the vicar of St Peter’s Church at Field Broughton in Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
. The couple moved to 41 Bedford Square, London, but in 1924 Lanchester built a house to his own design (Dyott End) in Oxford Road, Moseley
Moseley
Moseley is a suburb of Birmingham, England, two miles south of the city centre. The area is a popular cosmopolitan residential location and leisure destination, with a number of bars and restaurants...
. The couple remained there for the rest of their life together but had no children.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
in 1922, and in 1926 the Royal Aeronautical Society
Royal Aeronautical Society
The Royal Aeronautical Society, also known as the RAeS, is a multidisciplinary professional institution dedicated to the global aerospace community.-Function:...
awarded him a fellowship and a gold medal.
In 1925 Lanchester founded a company called Lanchester Laboratories Ltd. This was to carry out industrial research and development work. Although he developed an improved radio and gramophone speaker, he was unable to market it successfully because of the recession
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. He carried on, overworking, until in 1934 his health failed and the firm was forced to close. He was eventually diagnosed with Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system...
and was reportedly much grieved that this, along with cataracts in both eyes, prevented him from "doing any official job" during the Second World War.
He was awarded gold medals by the Institution of Civil Engineers
Institution of Civil Engineers
Founded on 2 January 1818, the Institution of Civil Engineers is an independent professional association, based in central London, representing civil engineering. Like its early membership, the majority of its current members are British engineers, but it also has members in more than 150...
in 1941 and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers
Institution of Mechanical Engineers
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers is the British engineering society based in central London, representing mechanical engineering. It is licensed by the Engineering Council UK to assess candidates for inclusion on ECUK's Register of professional Engineers...
in 1945.
Although he achieved his fame through his creative brilliance as an engineer, Frederick Lanchester was a man of diverse interests, blessed with a fine singing voice. Under the pseudonym of Paul Netherton-Herries he published two volumes of poetry.
Lanchester, who had never been commercially successful, lived out the rest of his life in straitened circumstances, and it was only through charitable help that he was able to remain in his home. He died at his home, Dyott End, on 8 March 1946.
Gas engines
Near the end of 1888, Lanchester went to work for the Forward Gas Engine CompanyForward Gas Engine Company
Forward Gas Engine Company was an engineering company making stationary internal combustion gas engines in Nechells, Birmingham, England.The most famous engineer to work at the plant was Frederick William Lanchester around 1895, who made various improvements to their engines, including a self...
of Saltley
Saltley
Saltley is an inner-city area of Birmingham, east of the city centre. The area is currently part of the Washwood Heath ward, although formerly a feature of the Nechells ward...
, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
as assistant works manager. His contract of employment contained a clause stating that any technical improvements that he made would be the intellectual property of the company. Lanchester wisely struck this out before signing. This action was prescient, for in 1889 he invented and patented a Pendulum Governor to control engine speeds, for which he received a Royalty
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
of ten shillings for each one fitted to a Forward Engine. In 1890 he patented a Pendulum Accelerometer, for recording the acceleration and braking of road and rail vehicles.
After the death of the current works manager, Lanchester was promoted in his place. He then designed a new gas engine of greater size and power than any produced by the company before. The engine was a vertical one with horizontal, opposed poppet valve
Poppet valve
A poppet valve is a valve consisting of a hole, usually round or oval, and a tapered plug, usually a disk shape on the end of a shaft also called a valve stem. The shaft guides the plug portion by sliding through a valve guide...
s for inlet and exhaust. The engine had a very low compression ratio
Compression ratio
The 'compression ratio' of an internal-combustion engine or external combustion engine is a value that represents the ratio of the volume of its combustion chamber from its largest capacity to its smallest capacity...
, but was very economical to run.
In 1890 Lanchester patented a self-starting device for gas engines. He subsequently sold the rights for his invention to the Crossley Gas Engine Company
Crossley
Crossley, based in Manchester, United Kingdom, was a pioneering company in the production of internal combustion engines. Since 1988 it has been part of the Rolls-Royce Power Engineering group.More than 100,000 Crossley oil and gas engines have been built....
for a handsome sum.
He rented a small workshop next to the Forward Company’s works and used this for experimental work of his own. In this workshop, he produced a small vertical single cylinder gas engine of 3 bhp, running at 600 rpm This was coupled directly to a dynamo
Dynamo
- Engineering :* Dynamo, a magnetic device originally used as an electric generator* Dynamo theory, a theory relating to magnetic fields of celestial bodies* Solar dynamo, the physical process that generates the Sun's magnetic field- Software :...
, which Lanchester used to light the Company’s office and part of the factory.
Petrol engines
Lanchester began to find the conflict between his job as works manager and his research work irksome. Therefore, in 1893, he resigned his position in favour of his younger brother George. At about the same time, he produced a second engine similar in design to his previous one but running on benzeneBenzene
Benzene is an organic chemical compound. It is composed of 6 carbon atoms in a ring, with 1 hydrogen atom attached to each carbon atom, with the molecular formula C6H6....
at 800 rpm. An important part of his new engine was the revolutionary carburettor, for mixing the fuel and air correctly. His invention was known as a wick carburettor, because fuel was drawn into a series of wicks, from where it was vapourised. He patented this invention in 1905.
Lanchester installed his new petrol engine in a flat-bottomed launch, which the engine drove via a stern paddle wheel
Paddle wheel
A paddle wheel is a waterwheel in which a number of scoops are set around the periphery of the wheel. It has several usages.* Very low lift water pumping, such as flooding paddy fields at no more than about height above the water source....
. Lanchester built the launch in the garden of his home in Olton
Olton
Olton is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull in the West Midlands, England. In the 13th century the Lords of the Manor moved their seat and formed a new settlement, in the junction of two major roads, that village has now grown into a big town called Solihull...
, Warwickshire
Warwickshire
Warwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare...
. The boat was launched at Salter’s slipway in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
in 1904, and was the first motorboat built in Britain.
Cars
Having put a petrol engine in a boat, the next logical step was to use it for road transport. Lanchester set about designing a four-wheeled vehicle to be driven by a petrol engine. He designed a new petrol engine of 5 bhp, with two crankshaftCrankshaft
The crankshaft, sometimes casually abbreviated to crank, is the part of an engine which translates reciprocating linear piston motion into rotation...
s rotating in opposite directions, for exemplary smoothness, and air cooling by way of vanes mounted on the flywheel. There was a revolutionary epicyclic gearbox
Epicyclic gearing
Epicyclic gearing or planetary gearing is a gear system consisting of one or more outer gears, or planet gears, revolving about a central, or sun gear. Typically, the planet gears are mounted on a movable arm or carrier which itself may rotate relative to the sun gear...
(years before Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
adopted it) giving two forward speeds plus reverse, and which drove the rear wheels via chains. With a walnut body, it seated three, side by side. (By contrast, Rudolf Egg's tricycle had a 3 hp (2.2 kW) 402 cc {24½in3) de Dion-Bouton
De Dion-Bouton
De Dion-Bouton was a French automobile manufacturer and railcar manufacturer operating from 1883 to 1932. The company was founded by the Marquis Jules-Albert de Dion, Georges Bouton and his brother-in-law Charles Trépardoux....
single and was capable of 40 km/h {25 mph}, and Léon Bollée
Léon Bollée
Léon Bollée was a French automobile manufacturer and inventor.-Life:Bollée's family were well known bellfounders and his father, Amédée Bollée , was the major pioneer in the automobile industry who produced several steam cars...
's trike a 1.9 kW {2.5 hp} 650 cc (40 in3) engine of his own design, capable of over 50 km/h {30 mph}.
Lanchester's car was completed in 1895 and given its first test run in 1896, and proved to be unsatisfactory, being underpowered and having transmission problems. Lanchester designed a new 8 hp (6 kW) 2,895 cc (177 in3) air-cooled engine with two horizontally opposed cylinders, still with two crankshafts. He also re-designed the epicyclic gearbox and combined it with the engine. A driveshaft
Driveshaft
A drive shaft, driveshaft, driving shaft, propeller shaft, or Cardan shaft is a mechanical component for transmitting torque and rotation, usually used to connect other components of a drive train that cannot be connected directly because of distance or the need to allow for relative movement...
connected the gearbox to a live axle
Live axle
A live axle, sometimes called a solid axle, is a type of beam axle suspension system that uses the driveshafts that transmit power to the wheels to connect the wheels laterally so that they move together as a unit....
. The new engine and transmission were fitted to the original 1895 car.
Lanchester had moved to larger workshops in Ladywood Road, Fiveways, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
as work on the car progressed and had also sold his house to help finance the cost of his research. A second car was then built with the same engine and transmission but with Lanchester’s own design of cantilever
Cantilever
A cantilever is a beam anchored at only one end. The beam carries the load to the support where it is resisted by moment and shear stress. Cantilever construction allows for overhanging structures without external bracing. Cantilevers can also be constructed with trusses or slabs.This is in...
suspension. This was completed in 1898 and won Gold Medal for its design and performance at the Automobile Exhibition and Trials at Richmond. It became known as the Gold Medal Phaeton
Phaeton body
A Phaeton is a style of open car or carriage without proper weather protection for passengers. Use of this name for automobiles was limited to North America or its products....
.
In 1898, Lanchester designed a water-cooled version of his 8 bhp engine, which was fitted to a boat, driving a propeller. In 1900 the Gold Medal Phaeton was entered for the first Royal Automobile Club
Royal Automobile Club
The Royal Automobile Club is a private club and is not to be confused with RAC plc, a motorists' organisation, which it formerly owned.It has two club houses, one in London at 89-91 Pall Mall, and the other in the countryside at Woodcote Park, Surrey, next to the City of London Freemen's School...
1,000 Miles Trial and completed the course successfully after one mechanical failure on route.
Lanchester Engine Company
In 1899 Lanchester and his brothers formed the Lanchester Engine Company in order to manufacture cars that could be sold to the public. A factory was acquired in Montgomery Street, SparkbrookSparkbrook
Sparkbrook is an inner-city area in south-east Birmingham, England. It is one of the four wards forming the Hall Green formal district within Birmingham City Council.-Etymology:...
, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, known as the Armourer Works. In his new factory, Lanchester designed a new ten h.p. twin cylinder engine. He decided to use a worm drive
Worm drive
A worm drive is a gear arrangement in which a worm meshes with a worm gear...
transmission and designed a machine to cut the worm gears. He patented this machine in 1905 and it continued for 25 years to produce all of the Lanchester worm gears. He also introduced the use of splined shafts and couplings in place of keys and keyways, another innovation that he patented. The back axle had roller bearings and Lanchester designed the machines to make these. His car was designed with the engine placed between the two front seats rather than at the front, and also had a side mounted tiller
Tiller
A tiller or till is a lever attached to a rudder post or rudder stock of a boat that provides leverage for the helmsman to turn the rudder...
rather than a steering wheel. The transmission also included a system similar to modern disk brakes that clamped the clutch
Clutch
A clutch is a mechanical device which provides for the transmission of power from one component to another...
disc for braking, rather than using a separate system as in most cars.
The new 10 hp car appeared in 1901 and remained in production until 1905, with only minor design modifications. He became a friend of Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
and would send him experimental models to test. In 1905, Lanchester produced a 20 hp four-cylinder engine, and in 1906 he produced a 28 hp six-cylinder engine. He was concerned with vibration and so introduced a crankshaft vibration damper and a harmonic
Harmonic
A harmonic of a wave is a component frequency of the signal that is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency, i.e. if the fundamental frequency is f, the harmonics have frequencies 2f, 3f, 4f, . . . etc. The harmonics have the property that they are all periodic at the fundamental...
balancer, both of which he patented.
The Lanchester Engine Company sold about 350 cars of various designs between 1900 and 1904, when they went bankrupt due to the incompetence of the Board of Directors. It was immediately reformed as The Lanchester Motor Company
Lanchester Motor Company
The Lanchester Motor Company Limited was a car manufacturer based until 1930 at Armourer Mills, Montgomery Street, Sparkbrook, Birmingham, England. It operated from 1895 to 1955....
. Lanchester became disillusioned with the activities of the company’s directors, and in 1910 resigned as general manager, becoming their part-time consultant and technical adviser. His brothers, George and Frank, took over technical and administrative responsibility for the company. In 1909 Lanchester also became technical consultant of the Daimler Motor Company
Daimler Motor Company
The Daimler Motor Company Limited was an independent British motor vehicle manufacturer founded in London by H J Lawson in 1896, which set up its manufacturing base in Coventry. The right to the use of the name Daimler had been purchased simultaneously from Gottlieb Daimler and Daimler Motoren...
for whom he designed the integral hybrid KPL double-deck bus, and subsequently of its parent company Birmingham Small Arms.
During this period he also experimented with fuel injection
Fuel injection
Fuel injection is a system for admitting fuel into an internal combustion engine. It has become the primary fuel delivery system used in automotive petrol engines, having almost completely replaced carburetors in the late 1980s....
, turbocharger
Turbocharger
A turbocharger, or turbo , from the Greek "τύρβη" is a centrifugal compressor powered by a turbine that is driven by an engine's exhaust gases. Its benefit lies with the compressor increasing the mass of air entering the engine , thereby resulting in greater performance...
s, added steering wheels in 1907 and invented the accelerator pedal, which previously would not turn off if the operator had problems. He invented (or was the first to use) detachable wire wheels, bearings that were pressure-fed with oil, stamped steel piston
Piston
A piston is a component of reciprocating engines, reciprocating pumps, gas compressors and pneumatic cylinders, among other similar mechanisms. It is the moving component that is contained by a cylinder and is made gas-tight by piston rings. In an engine, its purpose is to transfer force from...
s, piston ring
Piston ring
A piston ring is a split ring that fits into a groove on the outer diameter of a piston in a reciprocating engine such as an internal combustion engine or steam engine.The three main functions of piston rings in reciprocating engines are:...
s, hollow connecting rod
Connecting rod
In a reciprocating piston engine, the connecting rod or conrod connects the piston to the crank or crankshaft. Together with the crank, they form a simple mechanism that converts linear motion into rotating motion....
s, the torsional vibration damper, and the harmonic balancer.
Aeronautics
Lanchester began to study aeronauticsAeronautics
Aeronautics is the science involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of airflight-capable machines, or the techniques of operating aircraft and rocketry within the atmosphere...
seriously in 1892, eleven years before the first successful powered flight. Whilst crossing the Atlantic on a trip to the United States, Lanchester studied the flight of herring gull
Herring Gull
The European Herring Gull is a large gull , and is the most abundant and best known of all gulls along the shores of western Europe. It breeds across Northern Europe, Western Europe, Scandinavia and the Baltic states...
s, seeing how they were able to use motionless wings to catch up-currents of air. He took measurements of various birds to see how the centre of gravity compared with the centre of support. As a result of his deliberations, Lanchester, eventually formulated his circulation theory of flight. This is the basis of aerodynamics and the foundation of modern aerofoil theory. In 1894 he tested his theory on a number of models. In 1897 he presented a paper entitled “The soaring of birds and the possibilities of mechanical flight” to the Physical Society, but it was rejected, being too advanced for its time. Lanchester realised that powered flight required an engine with a far higher power-to-weight ratio than any existing engine. He proposed to design and build such an engine, but was advised that no one would take him seriously.
Lanchester was discouraged by the attitude to his aeronautical theory, and concentrated on automobile development for the next ten years. In 1907 he published a two-volume work, Aerial Flight, dealing with the problems of powered flight. In it, he developed a model for the vortices
Vortex
A vortex is a spinning, often turbulent,flow of fluid. Any spiral motion with closed streamlines is vortex flow. The motion of the fluid swirling rapidly around a center is called a vortex...
that occur behind wing
Wing
A wing is an appendage with a surface that produces lift for flight or propulsion through the atmosphere, or through another gaseous or liquid fluid...
s during flight, which included the first full description of lift
Lift (force)
A fluid flowing past the surface of a body exerts a surface force on it. Lift is the component of this force that is perpendicular to the oncoming flow direction. It contrasts with the drag force, which is the component of the surface force parallel to the flow direction...
and drag
Drag (physics)
In fluid dynamics, drag refers to forces which act on a solid object in the direction of the relative fluid flow velocity...
His book was not well received in England, but created interest in Germany where the scientist, Ludwig Prandtl mathematically confirmed the correctness of Lanchester’s vortex theory. In his second volume, he turned his attention to aircraft stability, aerodonetics, developing Lanchester's phugoid
Phugoid
A phugoid or fugoid is an aircraft motion where the vehicle pitches up and climbs, and then pitches down and descends, accompanied by speeding up and slowing down as it goes "uphill" and "downhill." This is one of the basic flight dynamics modes of an aircraft , and a classic example of a positive...
theory which contained a description of oscillations and stalls. During this work he outlined the basic layout almost all aircraft have used since then. Lanchester’s contribution to aeronautical science was not recognised until the end of his life.
In 1909 Asquith's Royal Advisory Committee on Aeronautics was set up, and Lanchester was appointed a member. Lanchester could see that aircraft would play an increasingly important part in warfare, unlike the military command, which saw warfare as continuing in the same way it had in the past.
Lanchester’s Power Laws
During World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
he was particularly interested in predicting the outcome of aerial battles. In 1916 he published his ideas on aerial warfare in a book entitled “Aircraft in Warfare: the Dawn of the Fourth Arm”, which included a description of a series of differential equation
Differential equation
A differential equation is a mathematical equation for an unknown function of one or several variables that relates the values of the function itself and its derivatives of various orders...
s that are today known as Lanchester's Power Laws
Lanchester's laws
Lanchester's laws are mathematical formulae for calculating the relative strengths of a predator/prey pair. This article is concerned with military forces....
. The Laws described how two forces would attrit each other in combat, and demonstrated that the ability of modern weapons to operate at long ranges dramatically changed the nature of combat—a force that was twice as large had been twice as powerful in the past, but now it was four times, the square of the quotient.
Lanchester's Laws were originally applied practically in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to study logistics
Logistics
Logistics is the management of the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of destination in order to meet the requirements of customers or corporations. Logistics involves the integration of information, transportation, inventory, warehousing, material handling, and packaging, and...
, where they developed into operations research
Operations research
Operations research is an interdisciplinary mathematical science that focuses on the effective use of technology by organizations...
(OR) (operational research in UK usage). Today OR techniques are widely used, perhaps most so in business.
The post-war company
After the war the Company introduced the more conventional Forty, a rival for the Rolls-RoyceRolls-Royce Limited
Rolls-Royce Limited was a renowned British car and, from 1914 on, aero-engine manufacturing company founded by Charles Stewart Rolls and Henry Royce on 15 March 1906 as the result of a partnership formed in 1904....
40/50 hp; it was joined in 1924 by an overhead cam 21 hp six. In 1921 Lanchester was the first company to export left-hand drive cars. Tinted glass was also introduced on these cars for the first time. A 4440 cc straight eight was launched at the 1928 Southport Rally, again with overhead cams: it proved to be the last "real" Lanchester, for in 1931 the company was acquired by B.S.A., who had also owned the Daimler Motor Company since 1909. From then until 1956, Lanchester cars were built at the Daimler factory in Coventry as sister cars with Daimler, like R-R with Bentley [ref Lanchester Legacy trilogy].
Lanchester's Legacy
Lanchester was respected by most fellow engineers as a far-sighted genius, but he did not have the business acumen to turn his inventiveness to financial gain. Whereas James WattJames Watt
James Watt, FRS, FRSE was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world.While working as an instrument maker at the...
had found an able business partner in Matthew Boulton
Matthew Boulton
Matthew Boulton, FRS was an English manufacturer and business partner of Scottish engineer James Watt. In the final quarter of the 18th century the partnership installed hundreds of Boulton & Watt steam engines, which were a great advance on the state of the art, making possible the...
, who took care of the business side of things, Lanchester had no such support. He wrote more than sixty technical papers for various institutions and organisations, and received awards from a number of bodies.
During most of his career he lacked financial backing to be able to develop his ideas and carry out research, as he would have liked. Few scientists have made so many contributions in so many different fields, as Lanchester has done. It is a pity that his name is not better remembered for his many achievements.
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, the Lanchester Car Monument
Lanchester Car Monument
The Lanchester Car Monument is an open-air galvanized steel sculpture of the Stanhope Phaeton, or Lanchester motor car. It is in Bloomsbury Village Green, a piece of reclaimed land in the Heartlands area of Birmingham, England...
, in the Bloomsbury, Heartlands, area of Birmingham, designed by Tim Tolkien
Tim Tolkien
Tim Tolkien is an English sculptor who has designed several monumental sculptures, including the award-winning Sentinel.His other claim to fame is as the great-nephew of J. R. R. Tolkien, the famous author of the fantasy book The Lord of the Rings...
, is on the site where the Lanchester company built their first four-wheel, petrol car in 1895. It was unveiled by Frank Lanchester's daughter, Mrs Marjorie Bingeman, and the Lanchester historian, Chris Clark at the Centenary Rally in 1995.
In 1970, several colleges in Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
merged to form Lanchester Polytechnic, so named in memory of Frederick Lanchester.It was renamed Coventry Polytechnic in 1987, and became Coventry University
Coventry University
Coventry University is a post-1992 university in Coventry, West Midlands, England. Under the terms of the Further and Higher Education Act of 1992, the institution's name was changed from Coventry Polytechnic to Coventry University...
in 1992.