LORD HIRST

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 21, 26 January 1943, Page 3

LORD HIRST

LONDON, January 24. , Lord Hirst, chairman of the General Electric Company, is dead. Lord Hirst was born at Munich, Germany, in 1863, and educated there. . After receiving some training in engineering he went to England and set up a small business in Manchester. Moving to London in 1885, he con- , centrated on the application of electricity to lighting and power production, both of which were still ; in their .infancy. He took a small shop in the city for the sale of electrical equip; , ment, and made a display of lighting', which to most people was a wonder. , Lord Hirst took part in the first "experiments with electrically-driven , vehicles and .boats... His business grew .rapidly, and in"1900 he turned it into . a public company. Continuing to expand, the concern, under the name of the General Electric Company, became one of the greatest businesses" in the . world, manufacturing all kinds of electrical appliances, and specialising in railway electrification. Lord Hirst was its chairman and managing director, and it was said of him that nothing was ever done in his factories, in which ,26,000 people %ere • employed, which he could not have done himself. In 1928, when the Australian Government invited the British Government to send a party of distinguished • leaders of industry to advise Australia on economic questions, Lord Hirst was ' one of the four men chosen. He then passed through New Zealand. Lord Hirst was a keen sportsman, and one of his racehorses, Diolite, ran third in the Derby in 1930.