Rudolph Alexander Robertson
Rudolph Alexander Robertson (c1880-1943)
1945 Obituary [1]
RUDOLPH ALEXANDER ROBERTSON was an Associate Member of the Institution for 37 years, having been elected in 1906. He was educated at George Watson's College, Edinburgh, and at the College of Technology, Leeds. His apprenticeship was served from 1896 to 1900 in the New Works Department of the Midland Railway at Derby, and with Messrs. J. and H. McLaren, engineers, of Leeds, from 1900 to 1904, in which latter year he received an appointment as engineer and assistant manager to the Thanai Tea Estate in Assam.
Returning to England in 1915, he was commissioned lieutenant in the R.N.V.R., and on his subsequent attachment to the R.N.A.S. was posted to the repair depot at the Talbot Works in London. Later he was transferred to the Mechanical Warfare Department of the Ministry of Munitions on his appointment as Director of Inspection, and finally he was made the director of the Anglo-American Tank Commission. After holding short appointments as manager of the London office of the Association of British Manufacturers and as engineer representative for the British Engineers' Association at the Wembley Exhibition, he became in 1925 assistant superintending engineer to the Sena Sugar Estates in Portuguese East Africa, where he was responsible for the maintenance of four large factories in addition to the erection of steel and concrete buildings and the general upkeep of a main railway line with its rolling stock.
On his return to this country seven years later he began to practice as a consulting engineer and was concerned with the layout of planes. In 1939 he was attached to the tank department of the Ministry of Supply and for several years was Inspecting Officer for the Manchester Area, and, in 1943, for the London Area, in the Inspectorate of Fighting Vehicles. Mr. Robertson's death occurred on 14th July 1943 , in his sixty-third year.