Late Great Engineers: Henry Royce

On 23 April 1933 the New York Times published a news piece under a headline simply stating: “Sir Henry Royce, Auto Man, is Dead.” In the three decks of bullet points before the article proper, we are reminded in sub-editor’s telegramese: ‘Designed Motor that Carried Alcock in First Non-Stop Flight Over Atlantic,’ ‘Began as a Newsboy,’ and ‘His Insistence on Quality Led to Creation of New Standard in Automobile Making.’ The journalism is almost as finely machined as the creations of this humble ‘mechanic’, his name for ever associated with the Silver Ghost – described by Autocar in 1907 as ‘the best car in the world’ – and the Merlin V12 aero engine. It was the Merlin that provided not just the Hurricane and Spitfire fighter planes of the Battle of Britain with spectacular performance but, as Peter Reese mentions early in his biography Sir Henry Royce: Establishing Rolls-Royce, from Motor Cars to Aero Engines, “virtually every notable British aircraft during the Second World War.”