A bank of knee mills at Dowty Aviation, 1967

Above, from Bryan Little, Cheltenham in Pictures. (Newton Abbot:  David & Charles, 1967). For the full article, see Dowty Aviation History.

George Dowty began his career working for the Gloster Aircraft Company. In 1935 he founded Dowty Aviation in Cheltenham, England, making wheels and landing gear for aircraft. In the 1960's, Dowty acquired Rotol Airscrews and Boulton Paul Aircraft.  In the same decade, it was involved in developing fuel control systems for the Harrier jump jet and power controls for the Concorde. At that time, about 10,000 workers were employed in the Gloucester area, almost half of them at the Dowty-Rotol factory.  In 1992, the TI Group acquired the company which shortly thereafter hived off most of the Dowty companies. A combined company, Messier-Bugatti-Dowty remains today the world's largest manufacturer of aircraft landing gear, with a continued presence in Gloucester.  In 2007, GE Aviation also bought part of the company, including the Arle Court factory, and in 2008 announced that the factory would close in 2010.  (To see the factory as it was in 1946, see Britain from Above.)  One worker anonymously commented:

"I am only anonymous because GE forbid us to talk to the press. I work for Dowty Propellers, we all hate GE here, and this includes senior management. In just 2 years they have succesfully (sic) destroyed all moral. I hope the Union wins this case, GE need bringing up short, this is not the USA and we are not held in Guantanamo bay, no matter how much those arrogant ***** would wish it.

GE taking over was the worse thing that ever happened to us, we all wish we now worke (sic) for Rolls-Royce."

Tragically, in 2008 the 22-year-old grandson of the founder shot himself with a friend's shotgun.  While suicide was suspected, the death was ruled accidental.

Yamaha Flatttracker

Phil Schilling; The Motorcycle World, The Ridge Press 1974

Matching tank, helmet and leathers!

Steamer Ann Sisson

Robert Legget, Ottawa Waterway, Gateway to a Continent, University of Toronto Press 1975

The sidewheeler Ann Sisson at the wharf at Quyon Qc. The 138 ft. vessel was built in 1857 at Chaudière Lake for Union Forwarding and RR for service on the Ottawa River. Photo probably taken in the 1860s as she seems to have been taken out of service in 1871.

Absinthe makes the heart...

La Vie Quotidienne des Français au XXe Siecle.  1900-2000.  Booster-LPM, 1999.

Banned in France in 1915, the drink was legalized in that country in 1988 where there are now 15 distilleries producing 800,000 litres of the green spirit annually.

As for the woman in the photo, she's in her negligee, looking negligected.

We used to make things in this country. # 178: The Bristol Company of Canada, Toronto

This old metal/cardboard tube was being used to store stove knobs by a previous owner, who donated it to a thrift shop. I bought it for the container.  

Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, William H. Bristol (1859-1930) was a brilliant American inventor.  He graduated from the Stevens Institute of Technology as a professional engineer and returned to his Alma Mater as an instructor in 1886, becoming a professor of mathematics in 1899.  During his tenure, his patents included a pressure chart recorder, so that year he joined forces with his father and brother to found the Bristol Company to manufacture the device.  By 1915, the factory at Platts Mills was manufacturing the largest and most complete line of industrial instruments in the world.  

Waterbury Time Machine III

In 1904, he also invented the first practical pyrometer, for which he formed another company, the William H. Bristol Pyrometer Company in New York City.

Waterbury Time Machine III

According to Wikipedia, 

In 1915, he invented the “Bristolphone” to simultaneously record voices and other sounds with motion in moving pictures. He founded the William H. Bristol Talking Picture Corporation to develop “synchronized talking motion pictures,” and produced one of the first full-length motion pictures with sound. The Bristolphone was used in nearly one hundred movie houses in the U.S. He also developed and manufactured loud speakers, power amplifiers, radios and phonograph recorders. His “Audiophone,” which was used at Yankee Stadium and Grand Central Station in New York, revolutionized public address systems.

By the time of his death, he had nearly 100 patents to his name.

Evidently, the company had a separate company in Canada in Toronto.  There's no longer a "Duchess Street" in that city, so I don't know where exactly it was located.

Sidecar Velocette Sunday

Phil Schilling; The Motorcycle World, The Ridge Press 1974

Greyhound Bus,1937

1937 design for Greyhound bus, by Count Alexis Sakhnoffsky, incorporating as much as possible, the trendy teardrop into the blocky bus shape of the day.

Albion farm machinery

W.G.V. Balchin (Consultant Editor).  The Country Life Book of the Living History of England.  Country Life Books, 1981.

Harris, McGregor & Co. Ltd. was founded in Leigh in 1872.  The company was very successful making first mowing machines and later reapers and binders for grain harvest. Eventually the product line included all sorts of farm related machinery.

  It was bought in 1955 by David Brown Tractors Ltd. of Meltham, Huddersfield.  Under this new ownership, it became the third largest tractor manufacturer in Britain.  In 1979, David Brown was bought by Tenneco Inc. of Houston, Texas.  Harris, McGregor ultimately became Case. Production declined, however, and the company closed down in 1988.

Vanished Makers: Jubilee Manufacturing Company, Omaha, Nebraska

I recently picked up this Jubilee auto horn (including the original mounting bracket and hardware) at an Ottawa thrift store. It has a lovely tone and I plan to install it on my Norton-sidecar combination.

The Jubilee Manufacturing Co was based in Omaha, Nebraska and dates back to the early decade of the last century, when they made the "Jubilee Self-Heating Flat Iron."  Nothing like a liquid fuel-burning iron to add a little excitement to that otherwise boring activity!

Popular Mechanics, 1909

By the next decade, they were offering automobile "spark intensifiers" and windshield wipers.

Popular Mechanics, 1917

In the early 1920's, they expanded into spark plugs, visors, hose clamps and even crystal radios.  Then, at least by the 1930's, they began to produce electric horns.  Below, a 1936 patent assigned to the company by the inventor:

Auto horns seem to have become their primary product and by the 1950's they were OEM suppliers to manufacturers like Chrysler and Harley-Davidson.

Durham Museum's Photo Archive

In the 1950's, the company was featured on an "Industry on Parade" film produced by the National Association of Manufacturers entitled   "Horns Aplenty!"  This included segments on horn manufacturing, women assemblers and cattle-calling horns. Eventually, in the 1970's they offered programmable horns that could play melodies like "Dixie" and "The Eyes of Texas."

These horns were apparently so ubiquitous that Cycle World lampooned them in their April 1984 issue (with illustrations by Bud Rembrandt, probably no relation to the more famous painter):

The Jubilee trademark expired in 1992.  So, I suppose, did the company.  On google maps, their former location (1931 South 20th Street in Omaha, Nebraska)  is not prosperous.  To quote T.S. Eliot, "This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper."

Below, a family photo of Mr. John L. McCague at his desk in Omaha, using a very modern Dictaphone, alas no date but I'm guessing late 1930's or early 40's. An artifact from an almost bygone world of small homegrown manufacturers who actually made real things that were useful and lasted.

Mr. McCague (1888-1974) headed the Jubilee Manufacturing Company from 1915 until his death, and was rightly proud of his company's reputation as the largest manufacturer in the United States of specialty horns for cars, trucks, and boats. (One of his customers was President Lyndon Johnson, who had a Jubilee cattle-calling horn installed in his Lincoln Continental and used it on his Texas ranch, terrifying reporters who rode along as he summoned cattle while driving off-road at high speed.) 

  How proud of Jubilee's products was Mr. McCague? Here's a clue. When his daughter gave birth to his grandson, in 1945, he wrote her a congratulatory note which said in part: "So the young man weighs seven pounds, seven ounces. Just the weight of a No. 125 Jubilee twin horn, but much harder to manufacture. I understand he has been built to very close tolerances, but that all dimensions gauge up correctly. Also that this particular model has been put out with a beautiful finish and plenty of eye-appeal."

Thank you, Tom!

Egli Vincent in red

Robert Patrignani Mario Columbo, Golden Treasury of Motorcycles, Crescent Books 1971

Ohhhhhhh, If I ever win the lottery..... That Brooklands can will have to go though.