The British Pioneers of Motor Industry

The first wholly British four-wheeler was Frederick Lanchester's, which made its trial run in February 1896. These developments were in anticipation of a change in the traffic laws, the result of an agitation led by two aristocratic motoring enthusiasts, the Hon. Evelyn Ellis and Sir David Salomons, and their Self-Propelled Traffic Association. In 1896 the 1865 and 1878 Acts were repealedandthe speed limit for road locomotives raised from 4 m.p.h. to '14 m.p.h. or less than this as the Local Government Board may decide'. As finally determined by the Board, the maximum speeds for vehicles of varying weights were: under 1 1/2 tons, 12 m.p.h.; 11/2-2 tons, 8 m.p.h.; over 2 tons, 5 m.p.h. With his usual showmanship Harry J. Lawson organized the first London to Brighton run, ostensibly to celebrate the liberation of the motor car but really to advertise his companies' automobiles. Lawson tried to do for the motor car what George Hudson did for the railway, become king of the new transport revolution. Fortunately for the British motor industry, he did not succeed. Although the English Daimler Company went on under other management to earn its reputation for quality cars, the Lawson empire, after his patents were defeated in the courts in 1903, declined and broke up.

The collapse of his monopoly, and the further raising of the speed limit to 20 m.p.h. in 1904, brought a flood of British car manufacturers into the field. Many of them were cycle manufacturers, with names which became famous automobile marques: Ariel, Humber, Morgan, Riley, Rover, Sunbeam, Swift, Triumph, and so on.

The further development of British Motor industry is connected with the names of F.H. Royce and William Morris. Both Royce and Morris were self-taught engineers of humble origin who rose in the traditional way by their native ability to great wealth. Frederick Henry Royce was the son of an unsuccessful miller and began life as a newspaper boy and telegraph messenger before his uncompleted apprenticeship at the Great Northern Railway works at Peterborough and jobs at the Electric Light and Power Company in London and Liverpool. Out of work at the age of twenty-one in 1884, he set up a partnership in a back-street workshop in Manchester, making lamp-holders and filaments, an electric bell of his own design and, eventually, high-quality dynamos and electric cranes. Henry Royce built a two-cylinder car of his own, which made its first trial ran in 1904, and then two more for his partners. The new third partner, Henry Edmunds, a motoring enthusiast and member of the Automobile Club committee, showed his car to his London friends, Claude Johnson and the Hon. Charles Rolls, son of Lord Llangattock and winner of the AA Thousand Miles Trial in 1900. They were so impressed by its quietness, smoothness and pulling power that they went into partnership with Royce to produce and sell it commercially.

Rolls-Royce cars were an immediate success, making the fastest nonstop run at the 1905 Manx Touring Trophy race and winning outright in 1906, and making a record time from Monte Carlo to London in 1905 at over 27 m.p.h. More important, they soon established themselves as the quietest, smoothest and most reliable cars on the market. By 1907 the company had evolved the ultimate car for silence and reliability, the Silver Ghost. The company settled down to produce this one model, which sold substantially unchanged for nineteen years - longer than the Model-T Ford - and claimed it as the best car in the world. Meanwhile, both Rolls and Royce took up the new cult of flying. Rolls was the first man to fly both ways across the Channel, before meeting his death in a competition at Bournemouth in 1910 at the age of thirty-three. Royce designed aero-engines for the war-planes of the First World War, from which a new Rolls-Royce Company was born.

The eldest son of a farm bailiff near Oxford, William Morris in 1893 at the age of fifteen was forced by his father's illness to go out to work to help support a family of five. He began to work as an assistant to a bicycle repairer, but set up on his own at the age of sixteen on a capital of £5, repairing and soon making custom-built bicycles. He graduated via motor cycles to selling, repairing and hiring out motor cars. In 1910 he began to work on the designs for a car. His aim was to manufacture a cheap, mass-produced, popular, all-British car to compete with the Model-T Fords which from 1910 began to be assembled at Ford's subsidiary at Old Trafford, Manchester. As far as possible, he emulated Ford's methods: until the latter revolutionized production all motor cars had been made as individual machines, one at a time. Ford first of all introduced batch production, the production of cars in groups on a large factory floor, with specialized mechanics moving from one to the next. When Morris began, Ford had not yet invented the assembly line, which was to become the main basis of twentieth-century mass production. Morris's genius was for persuading sub-contractors that they could make a handsome profit by volume production at what seemed impossibly low prices. Thus the engine might be halved in price (from £50 to £25) if it could be made in quantities of fifty or more a week. This system became responsible for the subdivision of the motor industry into hundreds of component manufacturers.

His first model, the Morris Oxford (8-9 horse-power, weighing 12 1/ 2 cwt, and capable of 55 m.p.h. and petrol consumption of 50 miles to the gallon) appeared at the Motor Show in 1912. Hitherto most cars of this size and performance had cost £250 to £400. The two-seater Oxford retailed at £165. Though not the cheapest car on the market, it was so successful that Morris obtained orders for 400, and immediately leased the old Military Academy at Cowley near Oxford and planned to produce 1,500 cars a year. He did not achieve this, quite, in 1914, mainly because of the war when he switched to the mass production of howitzer bomb-cases, but he had laid the foundations of British mass production of motor cars.

Morris was not the only manufacturer of cars for the mass or, strictly, the middle-class market. In 1914 there were no less than seventy different light cars on the British market, plus a large number of cyclecars. When registration of cars began in 1904 there were 17,810 vehicles on the road, under half of them cars. By 1914 there were 354,232, including 122,035 cars and 118,045 motor cycles.

 

2. Переведите на русский язык следующие английские словосочетания:

1 traffic laws 6 cycle manufacturers

2 vehicles of varying weights 7 native ability

3 king of the new transport revolution 8 an unsuccessful miller

4 empire declined and broke up 9 telegraph messenger

5 speed limit 10 to set up a partnership

 

3. Найдите в тексте английские эквиваленты следующих словосочетаний:

1 первый пробег из Лондона в Брайтон 6 иметь немедленный успех

2 качественные автомобили 7 самые надежные автомобили

3 крушение монополии 8 семья из пяти человек

4 инженеры-самоучки 9 соперничать с методами Форда

5 электрический звонок собственного дизайна 10 единственный

производитель машин

 

4. Найдите в тексте слова, имеющие общий корень с данными словами. Определите, к какой части речи они относятся, и переведите их на русский язык:

Develop, show, manage, product, possible, success, nine, rely, compete, cycle.

5. Задайте к выделенному в тексте предложению все типы вопросов (общий, альтернативный, разделительный, специальный: а) к подлежащему, б) к второстепенному члену предложения).

 

6. Выполните анализ данных предложений, обратив внимание на следующие грамматические явления: причастие I и II (Participle I & II), независимый причастный оборот, герундий, конверсия:

1 The collapse of his monopoly, and the further raising of the speed limit to 20 m.p.h. in 1904, brought a flood of British car manufacturers into the field.

2 Out of work at the age of twenty-one in 1884, he set up a partnership in a back-street workshop in Manchester, making lamp-holders and filaments.

3 Rolls-Royce cars were an immediate success, making the fastest nonstop run at the 1905 Manx Touring Trophy race and winning outright in 1906, and making a record time from Monte Carlo to London in 1905 at over 27 m.p.h.

4 Meanwhile, both Rolls and Royce took up the new cult of flying.

5 Morris beginning his activity, Ford’s assembly line was to become the main basis of twentieth-century mass production.

 

7. Ответьте на вопросы по тексту:

1 When did Frederick Lanchester's made its trial run?

2 Who determined the maximum speeds for vehicles of varying weights?

3 What famous automobile marques do you know?

4 What do you know about Frederick Henry Royce’ life?

5 When and what kind of partnership did he set up?

6 What was the reason of Rolls-Royce’s cars success?

7 When and why did William Morris go out to work?