Founded by William Armstrong in 1847, the original company was to become Armstrong Mitchell and then, through a series of mergers, Armstrong Whitworth. In 1927, it merged with Vickers Ltd. to form Vickers-Armstrong, though with its automobile and aircraft interests purchased by J. D. Siddeley.
During the first half of the 20th century, Sir W. G. Armstrong Whitworth & Co. Ltd. was a very important and influential British engineering company. Similar in organisation to Niles in America, they were remarkable not only for the quality of what they produced, but also its variety: battleships, massive guns and forgings of all types, railway engines, aircraft, cars, machine tools and, with their integrated organisation, the ability to build and fit-out entire factories to manufacture almost any large industrial product as well as munitions. However, while they constructed many huge, special-purpose lathes (many to make battleship guns) smaller versions could only have been of minor interest to them. Today, any machine tool marked Armstrong Whitworth is very rare - and few have survived.
One interesting and distinctive feature of many early Whitworth lathes was the joining of the front and back legs to form a triangulated structure - as seen in the 10th picture below.
If you have an Armstrong Whitworth lathe, the writer would be very interested indeed to hear from you.
The story of the company and its many impressive achievements makes for sobering reading when contrasted with the state of today's British industry
If you have an Armstrong Whitworth lathe, the writer would be very interested indeed to hear from you.
The story of the company and its many impressive achievements makes for sobering reading when contrasted with the state of today's British industry