Gas engines Near the end of 1888, Lanchester went to work for the
Forward Gas Engine Company of
Saltley,
Birmingham as assistant works manager. His contract of employment included a clause stating that any technical improvements that he made would be the intellectual property of the company. Lanchester wisely struck this out before signing. This action was prescient, for in 1889 he invented and patented a
Pendulum Governor to control engine speeds, for which he received a
royalty of ten shillings for each one fitted to a Forward Engine. In 1890 he patented a Pendulum Accelerometer, for recording the acceleration and braking of road and rail vehicles. After the death of the current works manager, Lanchester was promoted to his job. He then designed a new gas engine of greater size and power than any produced by the company before. The engine was a vertical one with horizontal, opposed
poppet valves for inlet and exhaust. The engine had a very low
compression ratio, but was very economical to operate. In 1890 Lanchester patented a self-starting device for gas engines. He subsequently sold the rights for his invention to the
Crossley Gas Engine Company for a handsome sum. He rented a small workshop next to the Forward Company's works and used this for experimental work of his own. In this workshop, he produced a small vertical single cylinder gas engine of , running at 600 rpm. This was coupled directly to a
dynamo, which Lanchester used to light the company's office and part of the factory. and air cooling by way of vanes mounted on the flywheel. There was a revolutionary
de Dion-Bouton single and was capable of 40 km/h {25 mph}, In his new factory, Lanchester designed a new ten horsepower twin cylinder engine. He decided to use a
worm drive transmission and designed a machine to cut the worm gears. He patented this machine in 1905 and it continued for 25 years to produce all of the Lanchester worm gears. He also introduced the use of splined shafts and couplings in place of keys and keyways, another innovation that he patented. The back axle had roller bearings and Lanchester designed the machines to make these. His car was designed with the engine placed between the two front seats rather than at the front, and also had a side-mounted
tiller rather than a steering wheel. The transmission also included a system similar to modern
disc brakes that clamped the
clutch disc for braking, rather than using a separate system as in most cars. The new 10 hp car appeared in 1901 and remained in production until 1905, with only minor design modifications. He became a friend of
Rudyard Kipling and would send him experimental models to test. In 1905, Lanchester produced a 20 hp four-cylinder engine, and in 1906 he produced a 28 hp six-cylinder engine. Although Sir
Henry Royce had already tackled the problem of
crankshaft torsional oscillation and consequent vibration in
straight-6 engines, Lanchester analysed the problem scientifically and invented the
torsional crankshaft vibration damper as a solution to the problem of engine balance. His design, patented in 1907, used a secondary flywheel coupled to the end of the crankshaft with a
viscous clutch. At around the same time Lanchester also patented a
harmonic balancer to cancel out the unbalanced secondary forces in a four-cylinder engine, using two balance weights rotating at twice crankshaft speed in opposite directions. The Lanchester Engine Company sold about 350 cars of various designs between 1900 and 1904, when they became
bankrupt due to the incompetence of the board of directors. It was immediately reformed as
The Lanchester Motor Company. During this period he also experimented with
fuel injection,
turbochargers, added steering wheels in 1907 and invented the accelerator pedal to help control engine operation, which previously would not cease if the operator had problems. He invented (or was the first to use) detachable wire wheels, bearings that were pressure-fed with oil, stamped steel
pistons,
piston rings, hollow
connecting rods, the torsional vibration damper for 6-cylinder engines, and the harmonic balancer for 4-cylinder designs. Eventually Lanchester became disillusioned with the activities of the company's directors, and in 1910 resigned as general manager, becoming their part-time consultant and technical adviser. His brothers, George and Frank, assumed technical and administrative responsibility for the company.
Daimler Company In 1909 Lanchester became a technical consultant for the
Daimler Company where he became involved in a number of engineering projects including the Daimler-Knight engine, variants of which powered the petrol-electric KPL bus and the
Daimler-Renard Road Train, and the first
British heavy tanks of World War I and powered all Daimler cars from 1909 to the mid-1930s winning in 1909 the coveted RAC
Dewar Trophy.
Daimler-Knight engines Working with Daimler in
Coventry, the American inventor Charles Knight had obtained a British patent for his modified
Knight engine on 6 June 1908, and in September 1908 Daimler announced the first 4-cylinder Daimler-Knight engine a double
sleeve-valve design developed from Knight's 1904 patents. Daimler had put all its resources into this "rather unsatisfactory engine" (according to Harry Ricardo), but although Lanchester continued to develop and work on the design, "he had realised that it was a forlorn hope from the start."
KPL bus The hybrid petrol-electric KPL (Knight-Pieper-Lanchester) bus used a pair of 4-cylinder, 12 h.p. (R.A.C. rating) Daimler-Knight engines each coupled to a
dynamotor driving one of the rear wheels, using a patent of
Henri Pieper. The bus was announced in June 1910 but the
Tilling-Stevens company (an associate of the
London General Omnibus Company) threatened a patent infringement action, and it was withdrawn in May 1911 after only 10 buses had been made.
Daimler-Renard Road Train Daimler began importing the
Renard Road Train in February 1907. Daimler fitted a number of four-cylinder 'pre-Knight' engines in the Road Train; Lanchester's development work resulted in a 75/80 hp Daimler-Knight 6-cylinder engine for the Daimler-Renard tractor unit in 1910. The
Birmingham Small Arms company (BSA) bought Daimler in 1910, and Lanchester became consultant engineer to the new parent company.
Daimler-Foster tractors A larger 100 hp 6-cylinder engine with twin crankshafts each driving a sleeve-valve appeared in January 1912, fitted to the larger of two Daimler-Foster agricultural tractors ('Agritractors') made in conjunction with
William Foster & Co. of
Lincoln. According to
Harry Ricardo, the duplication of the whole of the valve operating mechanism involved excessive mechanical complication and introduced grave difficulties in the way of mechanical synchronization. Lanchester designed a new
cylinder head for sleeve-valve engines and patented it with Daimler in February 1913. Gaining an extra 5 hp by April 1913, the 105 hp Daimler-Knight engine (coupled with the tractor's massive transmission designed by
William Tritton) powered the
Daimler-Foster artillery tractor, the No. 1 Lincoln Machine,
Little Willie, and the British
Mark I-IV tanks during
World War I. Lanchester's contract with Daimler was terminated after the
Wall Street crash of 1929; the Lanchester Motor Company's overdraft was also withdrawn, forcing immediate liquidation of its assets. BSA group, the owners of Daimler since 1910, completed the purchase of the Lanchester company in January 1931 and moved production to
Radford, Coventry.
Aeronautics Lanchester began to study
aeronautics seriously in 1892, eleven years before the first successful powered flight. Whilst crossing the
Atlantic on a voyage to the United States, Lanchester studied the flight of
herring gulls, seeing how they were able to use motionless wings to catch up-currents of air. He measured various birds to see how the centre of gravity compared with the centre of support. As a result of his deliberations, Lanchester, eventually formulated his circulation theory of flight. This is the basis of aerodynamics and the foundation of modern
aerofoil theory. In 1894 he tested his theory on a number of models. In 1897 he presented a paper entitled "The soaring of birds and the possibilities of mechanical flight" to the
Physical Society, but it was rejected, being too advanced for its time. Lanchester realised that powered flight required an engine with a much greater
power-to-weight ratio than any existing engine. He proposed to design and build such an engine, but was advised that no one would take him seriously. which included the first full description of
lift and
drag. His book was not well received in England, but created interest in Germany where the scientist
Ludwig Prandtl mathematically confirmed the correctness of Lanchester's vortex theory. In his second volume, Lanchester turned his attention to aircraft stability,
Aerodonetics , developing his
phugoid theory which contained a description of oscillations and stalls. During this work he outlined the basic layout used in most aircraft since then. Lanchester's contribution to aeronautical science was not recognised until the end of his life. In 1909
H. H. Asquith's
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was established, and Lanchester was appointed a member. Lanchester predicted correctly that aircraft would play an increasingly important part in warfare, unlike the military command which envisioned warfare as continuing much the same way it had in the past. The same year, 1909, Lanchester patented
contra-rotating propellers. In 1914 he gave the
Institution of Civil Engineers' 'James Forrest Lecture', on the subject of "The Flying Machine From An Engineering Standpoint".
Lanchester's Power Laws Lanchester was particularly interested in predicting the outcome of aerial battles. In 1914, before the start of
World War I, he published his ideas on aerial warfare in a series of articles in
Engineering. They were published in book form in 1916 as
Aircraft in Warfare: The Dawn of the Fourth Arm, and included a description of a series of
differential equations that are known now as
Lanchester's Power Laws. These laws described how two forces would attrit each other in combat, and demonstrated that the ability of modern weapons to operate at long ranges dramatically changed the nature of combat—a force that was twice as large had been twice as powerful in the past, but now it was four times, the square of the quotient. Lanchester's Laws were originally applied practically in the United States to study
logistics, where they developed into
operations research (OR) (
operational research in
UK usage). OR techniques are now widely used, perhaps most so for business.
The post-war company After the war, the company introduced the more conventional Forty engine, a rival for the
Rolls-Royce 40/50 hp; it was joined in 1924 by an
overhead cam 21 hp (RAC Rating) six cylinder engine. In 1921 Lanchester was the first company to export left-hand drive cars. Tinted glass was also introduced on these cars for the first time. A 4440 cc
straight eight engine was introduced at the 1928
Southport Rally, again with overhead cams: it proved to be the last "real" Lanchester, in 1931 the company was acquired by B.S.A., who had also owned the Daimler Company since 1909. From then until 1956, Lanchester cars were built at the Daimler factory in Coventry as sister cars with Daimler, like R-R with Bentley [ref Lanchester Legacy trilogy]. == Legacy ==