Frederick W. Lanchester - Biography

Biography

Lanchester was born at Lewisham, London to Henry Jones Lanchester, an architect, and his wife Octavia, a tutor. He was the fourth of eight children, his older brother Henry Vaughan Lanchester also becoming an architect. When he was a year old, his father relocated the family to Brighton, and young Frederick attended a preparatory school and a nearby boarding school, where he did not distinguish himself. He himself, thinking back, remarked that, "it seemed that Nature was conserving his energy". However, he did succeed in winning a scholarship to the Hartley Institution, in Southampton, and after three years won another scholarship, to Kensington College, which is now part of Imperial College. He supplemented his instruction in applied engineering by attending evening classes at Finsbury Technical School. Unfortunately, he ended his education without having obtained a formal qualification.

When he completed his education during 1888, he acquired a job as a Patent Office draughtsman for £3 a week. About this time he registered a patent for an isometrograph, a draughtsman’s instrument for hatching, shading and other geometrical design work.

During 1919, at the age of fifty-one, Lanchester married Dorothea Cooper, the daughter of Thomas Cooper, the vicar of St Peter’s Church at Field Broughton in Lancashire. The couple relocated to 41 Bedford Square, London, but in 1924 Lanchester built a house to his own design (Dyott End) in Oxford Road, Moseley. The couple remained there for the rest of their life together but did not have any children.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society during 1922, and during 1926 the Royal Aeronautical Society awarded him a fellowship and a gold medal.

During 1925 Lanchester initiated a company named Lanchester Laboratories Ltd., to perform industrial research and development work. Although he developed an improved radio and gramophone speaker, he was unable to market it successfully because of the Great Depression. He continued, overworking, until during 1934 his health failed and the company was forced to close. He was diagnosed eventually with Parkinson's disease and was reportedly much grieved that this, along with cataracts in both eyes, prevented him from "doing any official job" during the Second World War.

He was awarded gold medals by the Institution of Civil Engineers during 1941 and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers during 1945.

Although he achieved his fame by his creative brilliance as an engineer, Frederick Lanchester was a man of diverse interests, blessed with a fine singing voice. Using the pseudonym of Paul Netherton-Herries he published two volumes of poetry.

Lanchester, who had never been successful commercially, lived the remainder of his life in straitened circumstances, and it was only through charitable help that he was able to remain in his home. He died at his home, Dyott End, on 8 March 1946.