Clare M Scott's letter to her grandchildren
I wish you to know of some of the original inventions and painstaking works of your clever grandfather, William Harding Scott, founder of the firm of Laurence, Scott & Electromotors. He was of a very retiring nature and never thought he was doing anything wonderful, but I think his grandchildren ought to know more about him and his genius.
I have heard it said that he was one of the eight or so men of his generation who were the real progenitors of electrical engineering, for when he started there was no electrical engineering as we think of it now. Only a few people, like Edison in America and three or four in this country, were working on practical lines.
You may not be interested in the mass of detail that goes to make up electrical machinery, and I do not know enough about it to explain it all, but I am giving some particulars of his inventions in this letter as they have been told to me. Some of these are in use today and in fact always will be, because they are concerned with the creation and use of power.
He was a boy at a very interesting time, when many people had begun to wonder whether electricity could not be ‘used in the service of man’ in other ways than in making interesting laboratory experiments or clever mechanical toys. Very little had been done for a couple of generations to make use of what had been found out in the laboratory, but towards the 1880’s there were writers, with a lot of imagination but little wisdom, who wee prophesying in the journals of the time that electricity (without apparently any other help) would do everything for mankind. There were also experienced engineers who pointed out how unpractical this was, but most of them seem to have thought there was little future for electricity beyond the rather showy and unreliable lighting of public places.
There were very few people, like your grandfather (and from now on I shall refer to him as W.H.S.) who had the imagination to see the way in which development could take place, and the skill and enthusiasm to make their ideas come true. He intended to be a schoolmaster, but electricity called him.
It was very soon after ‘incandescent bulb’ lamps had first been made, and it had been found that they could be connected up to distributing mains in what is now the usual way (which made indoor lighting practical), that he took a job (as a young fellow of 19) with the Hammond Co. This brought him to Norwich where Colmans, the mustard people, wanted to install ‘the electric light’ in one of their flour mills, by way of an experiment.
That is how it happened that W.H.S. settled in Norwich. He promptly set himself to find out how it worked and how things were made, and in 1883, by the time he was 20, he had started a business on his own account, in a small place in King Street which was known as the Gothic Works. Here he got about 20 men together (some of them fishermen, who were used to making nets and were consequently handy with their fingers) and started making dynamos, and putting electric light in two or three factories and shops.
There were no text-books on electrical design then, and such technical colleges and evening classes in engineering as there were, could give little help in electrical matters. A few manufacturers had turned out dynamos that worked (mostly for outdoor arc lighting) but they were made by "trial and error", and it was quite usual to find, if the design were altered ever so little, that they would not work. Electric motors were not then thought to be a practical business at all.
Anyone wanting to fit up electric light had to make the dynamo (which he hoped would work), and also all the fittings such as switches, fuses and lampholders, and even sometimes cover the copper wire. Added to all this, people had to be persuaded that electric light was a good thing, and (later) that electric motors would not be always breaking down.
In the early 1880's things were moving fast, and several people, in different parts of the country, were thinking in the same direction. Two or more people would be working for a year or more without knowing what others were doing, and sometimes much the same result was brought out within a few months, quite independently. It is therefore difficult to say that anyone was first with a particular idea. One can say however that W.H.S. was the first, or one of the first, in most of the early advances.
In the early days of electric light the ceiling roses and switches were made of wood, which caused trouble due to the wood absorbing moisture and causing short circuits (or leakages). W.H.S. began to search for better insulating materials and worked with the pottery firms and produced such fittings in china. They were very successful and many patents were taken out.
With the limited knowledge available regarding insulating material the distribution of electricity was difficult and of course high voltage transmission over long distances, as now used, was unknown. W.H.S. developed a three wire system which greatly increased the distance over which electricity could be transmitted, using copper strips on china insulators and fitted in cement troughs or drain pipes. He was one of the first to study the problem of charging for electricity, realizing that if everybody used electricity at night and hardly at all during the day it would be expensive. So he developed the Scott meter, which was arranged so that electricity used during the day was charged at a cheaper rate than that used during the dark period when everybody wanted it.
The first dynamos were driven from steam engines through belts, and owing to the governing of the engine speed being imperfect the lights were always going up and down to the rhythm of the engine speed. W.H.S. worked with the engine makers, and produced direct-coupled engines and dynamos and eventua1ly a type of vertical steam engine known as the "Scott” engine which had a greatly improved governor and gave a steady light without jerking. This was also the period when the gas engine and the paraffin engine (the precursor of the modern internal combustion engine) were being developed, and W.H.S. took a very active part in all these fast-moving developments on both the electrical and mechanical sides.
He was very early in getting down to workable methods of design, so he could be sure beforehand of the results. He was very early in making and installing practical electric motors, and was one of the first to make multi-polar dynamos and motors. He made slotted armatures when nobody else was doing so, much as they are made today, and introduced several methods of doing the windings, and invented schemes of connections.
He made dynamos for some of the first merchant ships to have electric light, and later he got the Admiralty to put in electric motors in warships. He designed and made for the Admiralty the first of nearly every new type of electric apparatus they tried - electric fans, capstans, turret turning, ammunition hoists, lifts, circuit breakers and other switchgear, and drives for much of the auxiliary machinery.
The success of this sea-going work was due mainly to the reliability of what he made, particularly his methods of armature winding, and the use of mica for most of the insulation, in which he was a pioneer.
For many years (during which things were moving very quickly) W .H.S. was unofficial "Consulting Engineer" to the Engineering Department of the Admiralty, and when later a new Electrical Department was formed at the Admiralty, his standard practice was taken as the official Admiralty Specification, and in essence still remains.
Work for merchant shipping came on quickly, after much doubt on the part of the "steam” people had been got over, largely by his influence. He was one of the first in the field with electric capstans and windlasses, and the first with the worm-geared winches which are generally associated with his name, and with electric steering gear.
For shore work, as well as for ships, W.H.S. was responsible for many ingenious schemes of control and for combined equipment for which motors, motor-generators and switchgear had to be designed together as a single whole.
He was one of the first to design a successful car starter, and it is amusing to recall how many car owners snorted at the idea of needing such a device which soon became universal. During the great slump which followed soon after the 1914-18 war, he designed an automatic traffic control system to give his men work to do, for it hurt his kind heart to have to turn his good men away. Although this activity was dropped when trade in electric motors and dynamos improved, there are still a few of these controllers working well in Norwich.
In this continual new work, and in his many inventions and patents, W.H.S. had his own methods of clear thinking, and a most unusually sound eye and judgment of engineering matters.
After about twelve years, the business outgrew the King Street works and a new Gothic Works was started on the present site. At first quite small, it steadily grew until it filled all the space available and overflowed into other works. W.H.S. had as a partner in the early days, Mr Paris, and a little later Mr Reginald Laurence. When Mr Paris left, the firm took the title of Laurence, Scott, by which it was so long known. As the business prospered and grew, W.H.S. lost none of his interest in the work or in the workpeople.
His success was as much due to his personal character as to his inventive genius. When dealing with outside people, he gave them the best engineering advice, whether it was in his own interest or not, and they came to trust him. From those working with him, he expected team-work, and got loyal co-operation.
Only by great perseverance and common-sense (which is not common) allied with real genius could he have started and carried through as he did. But few men, in building up a great business, can have earned in the same degree respect, loyalty and affection.
Apart from his work as an engineer, in which perhaps he found his greatest happiness, his chief relaxation was sailing, which he loved. W.H.S. designed and had built a small cruiser called "Moonraker", because it had the tallest mast on the Broads, being Bermudian rigged. She was built of mahogany and was a fine boat, giving him and his family as well as many friends great pleasure for years. His other sport was motoring, especially on the Continent, always by unlikely routes and over the highest passes in Europe. Being well-read in history and having a liking for geology and a love of flowers and trees it was a great joy and privilege to travel with him, and my happiest memories are of the passes of the Pyrenees, Dolomites and Alps. He loved the sea and we had one fine trip to the West Indies and to a banana plantation a hundred miles to the south of the Isthmus of Panama in the Caribbean Sea. Near there we spent a few days on an unknown island and sailed to another which was occupied by Caribs who had never seen white people before and even had Totem Poles in front of their coconut palm huts. They were a race of very small people (about 4'8") with straight hair and golden brown skins, much of the latter being displayed.
Several years later we went to India where Tom was at that time on business; and the memorable time we had there, and also some other travels in which W.H.S. took such keen interest, are perhaps worth describing in another letter, for we did see some of the greatest of the wonders and beauties of the world. However much W.H.S. enjoyed these holidays, he was always glad to get back to Oaklands and to the Works he loved. He often said how thankful he was that he had two able sons to carry on the name. It is so sad that this was not to be, for sudden and tragic illness took both Jim and Tom and now they are with their father. My hope is that a descendant will inherit something of the genius of W.H.S. and will carry on his name and some part of his work.
W.H.S. lived to the age of 76 and to the end was as keen and as interested as ever in his work and the affairs of the world.
I am grateful to be able to set down these memories of our happy life together.
Clare M. Scott
'Grannie'
April 23rd 1944