DEATH OF AN EMINENT ENGINEER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8529, 1 April 1891, Page 3

DEATH OF AN EMINENT ENGINEER.

4 The announcement is made of the sudden death of Mr. Nathaniel Clayton, who was head of the celebrated engineering firm of Clayton and Shuttleworth, Lincoln. Mr. Clayton was born in 1811, and at the age of thirty-one commenced business in connection with the late Mr. Shuttleworth ; and from a comparatively small beginning there sprang up a business of world-wide fame. The first portable engine was turned out in 1845. It was rated as of 8 horsepower, and had a pair of horizontal 6-inch cylinders fixed on the top of the boiler. The following year they constructed two engines of 10 horse-power. In 1847 they built eight engines, of tho aggregate power of seventy-three horses. Although the construction of portable engines was at first taken up by the firm as a secondary matter, they soon recognised the important position which the manufacture of such engines was likely to assume, and they were not long in making that manufacture their speciality. Orders rapidly came in, and the premises were so largely extended that in 1851 the firm were able to turn out no fewer than 120 portable engines, of 611 horse-power in the aggregate. The great exhibition brought manufacturers and farmers into direct contact, and the latter had an opportunity of examining a far finer collection of agricultural machinery than ever been before brought under their notice. The result was a material advance in the application of machinery to agriculture, and in 1852 Messrs. Clayton and Shuttleworth turned out '209 engines, of a total power of 1153 horse-power. ■ The following year, at the Gloucester Show, the firm took the Royal Agricultural Society's first prize for portable engines for the first time, and year after year they extended their operations, erecting new plant, improving the design and construction of their engines, and adopting improved methods of manufacture until, in 1863, the year following tho second International Exhibition, they turned out 395 engines, or considerably over one per day. By that time the firm were far ahead of any of their competitors, but their business still continued to increase, and during the year 1874 the number of engines delivered from the Stamp End Works was 900. The engines have been numbered consecutively from the " No. 1" made in 1845, and those now in course of construction all bear numbers over 26,000. The last engine turned out was numbered 20,204. The firm of Clayton and Shuttleworth has been celebrated for their threshing machines' as well as for their portable -engines. Up to the end of last year upwards of 24,000 of these useful and popular threshers had been produced. It may be mentioned that Mr. Clayton took the chief part in directing the operations of the firm, and the excellent organisation which is noticeable in every department is due in a great , measure to his personal supervision. After tho death of his friend and partner, Mr. Joseph Shuttleworth, in February, ISB3, the deceased devoted nearly the whole of his time to the task of still farther extending the colossal business they had formed, and everything he did had the full approval of his nephews and partners, Mr. Alfred and Major Shuttleworth. After the great exhibition year the firm commenced to do a large trade, foreign orders came in rapidly, and the business of the firm became so extensive in Austria, Hungary, and the Danubian Principalities that in 1857 the firm started a branch establishment at Vienna, at which 700 hands are now employed. Here agricultural machinery suitable for the country is manufactured and repairs done. Subsequently other branches have been established at Pesth, Prague, Cracow, Lemberg,;and Crajova.