When Disraeli's hero, Coningsby, visited Manchester, part of his education consisted in learning for the first time about machines, “those mysterious forms full of existence without life, that perform with facility, and in an instant, what man can fulfil only with difficulty and in days”. After visiting the spinning mills and. the weaving
sheds, he turned to the making of machines themselves.
“The mystery of mysteries is to view machines making
machines; a spectacle that fills the mind, with curious,
and. even awful speculation".(1) A
hundred years later most of the mystery appears to have
gone, and. economists talk learnedly about the
relationship between the demand for machines and the
demand for finished goods, while technologists continue
to mechanise processes, which were previously dependent
upon human labour. Yet even to an observer brought up in
the atmosphere of a machine age, there is still an
element of “mystery of mysteries” about some of
the giant machines in workshops such as those of Mather
& Platt Ltd. Machines
constructed by the Company fall into certain definite
categories, corresponding to the several trading
departments of’ the modern business. The General
Machinery Department is primarily concerned with the
design, manufacture and installation of textile finishing
machinery but, in addition, is responsible for the
production of certain special plant for the chemical and
other industries; the Pump Department concentrates in the
supply of a wide range of centrifugal pumps applicable to
the great majority of modern pumping duties; the main
interest of the Electrical Department is the production
of the larger sizes of A.C. and D.C. motors and
generators: the products of the Fire Engineering Division
are manifold, covering specialities for extinguishing and
restricting the spread of fire: and. the Food. Machinery
Department provides complete lines of machinery for the
canning of vegetables, fruit, fish, meat and milk.
Certain common features emerge in the story of each
of’ the departments — the scientific background
of new invention, the technical basis of design, the
change from hand made to more mechanised methods of
production, and finally the relationship between
technical progress and business initiative. But before
these general problems can be discussed, it is essential
to trace the main lines of development separately. The
relative economic importance of the different products
has shifted in different periods of the history of the
firm, just as have the opportunities of technical
progress.
|
A History of Mather & Platt
Ltd.