 Early results
of the association with Vickers were the taking over of their electrical
department at River Don works, Sheffield, which was making the smaller
electrical machines, and the decision to transfer the tramway motor
section to Sheffield, where steel castings were easy to get and a
newly built armament factory was available at Attercliffe Common.
By August 1920 the Company was in full control of the electrical work
at Sheffield. A. D. Williamson, who had been general manager of the
Vickers electrical department, took charge of both factories with
G. H. Nelson as works manager; A. E. Hodson (like Nelson, a Trafford
Park man) became superintendent at Attercliffe, and T. Campbell continued
as superintendent at River Don. Traction motors were still designed
in the motor department at Trafford Park until early in 1922, when
a separate traction motor engineering department was set up at Sheffield
to which the staff was transferred with G. H. Fletcher as chief engineer.
In
1923 when Williamson retired and his responsibilities passed to
G. E. Bailey, then works manager at Trafford Park, the post-war
demand for electrical equipment had fallen off. It was decided to
make Attercliffe Common into a self-contained traction motor factory,
and the electrical department at River Don was closed down, except
for the mica shop which remained there until 1932. In 1928 the growing
traction orders were threatening to swamp the manufacturing capacity
at Sheffield, where the employees numbered nearly 800, and negotiations
with Vickers ended in M-V buying the whole Attercliffe Common works
(apart from the stamp shop) in 1931. This made 4 1/2 acres of single-storey
building available for traction work.
The
Company's ability to provide comprehensive equipment for railway
electrification reached out in 1926 into the field of railway
signalling. A new company, Metropolitan-Vickers-GRS Limited, was
formed jointly with the General Railway Signal Company of Rochester,
New York, to sell in this country and in the Dominions apparatus
designed and developed by the American company and made at the Trafford
Park works. This intention has been amply fulfilled by the M-V-GRS
equipment installed in many parts of the world.
Another
useful acquisition from Vickers was the electric heating and cooking
appliances business of a subsidiary. Electric and Ordnance Accessories
Limited of Birmingham. This fell in well with Hilton's view that
the 'supplies' business could be dealt with more effectively by
selling goods of our own make than by factoring, and there was room
at the Cosmos works to make domestic appliances. A range of radiant
fires was evolved that were the first of their type and, in fact,
the ancestors of today's models.
The
manufacture of electric light fittings was tackled by buying Harcourts
Limited, a century-old Birmingham firm carrying on a high-class
business as brass founders. A well-known sculptor, Walter Gilbert,
whose father created Eros in Piccadilly Circus, was engaged as art
director, together with skilled modellers, casters, chasers, and
artists. By 1922 many types of fittings from the most utilitarian
to the most elaborate required by architects were being produced
under the management of N. Dennes.
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