Metropolitan-Vickers, or
Metrovick, was a
British heavy industrial firm of the early-to-mid
20th century formerly known as
British Westinghouse. Highly diversified, they were particularily well known for their industrial electical equipment and generators, street lighting, electronics,
steam turbines and
diesel locomotives. Metrovick holds a place in history as the builders of the first commercial
transistorized computer, the
Metrovick 950, and the first British
axial-flow jet engine, the
Metrovick F.2.
History
Metrovick started as a way to separate the existing British Westinghouse factories from US control, which had proven to be a hinderance to gaining contracts during World War I. In 1916 a holding company was formed to try to find financing to buy the company's properties, which eventually led to investment by the Metropolitan Carriage, Wagon and Finance Company in 1919. British Westinghouse was now a truly British company, and soon purchased by Vickers, who changed the name to Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Company on September 8 1919.
The immediate post-war era was marked by low investment and continued labour unrest. Fortunes changed in 1926 with the formation of the Central Electricity Board which standardized electrical supply and led to a massive expansion of electrical distribution, installations, and applicance purchases. Sales shot up, and 1927 marked the company's best year to date.
BTH merger and transition to AEI
In 1928 Metrovick merged with the rival British Thomson-Houston (BTH), a company of similar size and basically the same product lineup. Combined, they would be one of the few companies able to compete with Marconi or English Electric on an equal footing. In fact the merger was marked by poor communication and intense rivalry, and the two companies generally worked cross purposes. The next year the combined company was purchased by the Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) holding group, who also owned Edison Swann (Ediswan) and Ferguson Pailin . The rivalry between Metrovick and BTH continued, and AEI was never able to exert any control over the problem.
Problems grew dramatically worse in 1929 with the start of the great depression, but Metrovick's overseas sales were able to pick up some of the slack, notably a major railway electrification project in Brazil. By 1933 world trade was growing again, but growth was nearly upset when six Metrovick engineers were arrested and found guilty of espionage in Russia. The British government intervened; the engineers were released and trade with Russia was resumed after a brief embargo.
In 1936 Metrovick started work with the Air Ministry on automatic pilot systems, eventually branching out to gunlaying systems and building radars the next year. In 1938 they reached an agreement with the Ministry to build a turboprop design developed at the RAE under the direction of Haine Constant. It is somewhat ironic that BTH, their erstwhile partners, were at the same time working with Frank Whittle on his pioneering jet designs. The same year they arranged a contract with A.V. Roe to start construction of the Avro Manchester under license. Metrovick would eventually supply 1,000 of the Manchester's offspring, the Avro Lancaster.
In 1940 the turboprop effort was re-engineered as a pure jet engine after the successful run of Whittle's designs. The new design became the Metrovick F.2 and eventually flew in 1943 on a Gloster Meteor. Considered to be too complex to bother with, Metrovick then re-engineered the design once again to produce roughly double the power, while at the same time starting work on a much larger design, the Metrovick F.9 Sapphire. Although the F.9 proved to be a winner, the Ministry of Supply nevertheless forced the company to sell the jet division to Armstrong Siddeley in 1947 to reduce the number of companies in the business.
The post-war era led to massive demand for electrical systems, leading to additional rivalries between Metrovick and BTH as each attempted to one-up the other in delivering ever-larger generator contracts. Metrovick also expanded their applicance division during this time, becoming a well known supplier of refrigerators and stoves. Another area of major expansion was in the diesel locomotive market, where they combined their own generators with third-party diesel engines to deliver the D5705, which was widely used in England.
The rivalry between Metrovick and BTH was eventually ended in an unconvincing fashion when the AEI management eventually decided to rid themselves of both brands and be known as AEI universally, a change they made on January 1 1960. This move was almost universally resented within both companies. Worse, the new brand name was utterly unknown to their customers, leading to a noticable fall-off in sales and AEI's stock price.
GEC takeover
When AEI then went on to attempt to remove the doubled-up management structures, they found this task to be even more difficult. By the mid-1960s the company was struggling under the weight of two complete management hierarchies, and they appeared to be unable to control the company any more. This allowed AEI to be purchased by GEC in 1967, which became Marconi plc in 1999 (now Marconi Corporation plc).
