February 1960 – The Bristol Aeroplane Company

The company that started life as The British and Colonial Aeroplane Company might not have got off the ground if founder Baronet Sir George White hadn’t had an encounter with Wilbur Wright in France in 1909.  

The meeting helped Sir George to see the business potential of aviation and, with the help of brother Samuel and his son Stanley, used working capital of £25,000 to set up the company’s first facilities in an old tram shed in the Filton area of Bristol. 

“The products of that firm and its successors have been prominent in the history of aviation and of this country; the first recorded military’ heavier-than-air flight was made by a ‘Boxkite’, while in the Great War the ‘Scout’ and, particularly, the two-seater ‘Fighter’ earned fame, both being designs of Capt. F. S. Barnwell,” noted The Engineer in its round up of achievements at the company.

After the war the firm was named The Bristol Aeroplane Company, and in 1920 it acquired the Cosmos Engineering Company, which built air-cooled radial engines in Bristol.