FORTUNE FROM IDEAS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21963, 6 March 1946, Page 3

FORTUNE FROM IDEAS

BRITISH ENGINEER £12,000,000 TURNOVER Fourteen years ago a British engineer opened a hal£-a-crown-a-week workshop with a capital of £IOO. His turnover last year was £12.000,000. He is George Dowty, of Kemble, Gloucestershire, inventor and manufacturer of a secret device for easy landings of aircraft. Mr. Dowty calls himself “gn ideas man,” adding, « you can put over your idea you can always get someone to carry it out General Lee and Rear-Admiral Jules fresh safety devices for aircraft and engineering—and even mousetraps In 1932 Mr. Dowtv designed an internally sprung aircraft wheel No one seemed interested, but Mr Dowty made models in a garage workshop he rented for 10s a month. The Air Ministry promised to consider the design, but apparently lost it in a governmental pigeonhole—so. there being no war clouds around then, Mr Dowty sold it to the Japanese, who fitted it on their Kwasaki fighter. The R.A.F. raised an interested eyebrow. so Mr. Dowty made an improved model and fitted it to the Gladiator fighters. He was able to buy in aTO,OOO square foot factory, employing 3000 workmen and sub-contracting to 250 smaller firms, making components. Business boomed, and during the war Mr. Dowty’s factories employed 45,000, turning out aircraft and bomb components on the secret list and equipping his special landing gear, enabling the heaviest bombers to taxi in as gently as a train at a terminal station. The latest Dowty invention is the “liquid spring” shock absorber, ordered by the thousand by the Ministry of Aircraft Production and in America. The spring is only 20 inches long and uses compressed oil. . Mr Dowty believes that industrial researches should be stimulated and encouraged but not necessarily con- ! trolled by the Government, though the State should have access lor defence reasons to the results of such Trivial ideas, says Mr. Dowty, o'Lcn hide great scientific principles.