SIR ALFRED YARROW.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20465, 17 January 1930, Page 11

SIR ALFRED YARROW.

PIONEER'S REMINISCENCES.

FIRST TYPIST IN ENGLAND.

LONDON. Jan. 15.

In a broadcast speech on the occasion of his 88th birthday Sir Alfred Yarrow,. the shipbuilding engineer, revealed his remarkable association with two epoch-making inventions. Sir Alfred's adventures on the roads in 1861 with a steam carriage led <o legislation forbidding the use of enginedriven vehicles unless a man walked ahead carrying a red flag. This provision was not repealed until the passing of the Motor Act in 1896. It was also disclosed that he was the first Englishman to use a typewriter. The first hatch was imported from America in 1876. While they were being landed the case, containing 12 machines, fell into a dock, and when it was raised from the mud no one knew what the machines were.

Sir Alfred and a friend purchased the lot for a few shillings and had them cleaned and oiled. In response to an advertisement for a shorthand writer who could play the piano a youth applied. He was engaged and remained in Sir Alfred Yarrow's employment until his death.

At the age of 85, in 1927, Sir Alfred F. Yarrow, the founder of Yarrow and Company, Limited, shipbuilders and sngineers, resigned from the chairmanship of the firm, not because he was tired of work, but because he thought it was not good for a man of his age to be burdened with too much responsibility. Sir Alfred invented, among other things, the Yarrow marine boiler now used by navies all over the world. He also created the destroyer type of warship, and his firm built one of these craft, the Tyrion, which, in 1919, steamed nearly 40 knots—the highest speed ever attained by any ship. He has given much to hispitals and other charities, and in 1923 gave £IOO,OOO to the Royal Society, of which he is a Fellow, for research.