William Frank Pattison
William Frank Pattison (c1893-1948)
1949 Obituary [1]
"WILLIAM FRANK PATTISON, M.B.E., was educated at the Bedford Modern School and entered the Queen's Engineering Works of Messrs. W. H. Allen, Son and Company, Ltd., of Bedford, as a pupil in 1907. On the completion of his training five years later he gained some experience as a junior draughts man with Messrs. Willans and Robinson, Ltd., of Rugby, but in 1914 he enlisted and served as a troop sergeant with the Bedfordshire Yeomanry in France for two years.
He then rejoined Messrs. W. H. Allen and was employed on tool design and operation planning. In the following year, however, he was granted a commission in the Royal Engineers and was made officer-in-charge of workshops at Richborough. On demobilization in 1919 he received an appointment as superintendent mechanical engineer to the Roumanian Consolidated Oilfields at Ploesti, where he remained until 1923, when for a brief period he was a designer in the oil engineering department of Messrs. Vickers, Ltd. A year later he joined the staff of the London office of the International Standard Electric Corporation as assistant to the European plant engineer and was chiefly concerned with the design, erection, installation, and maintenance of factories manufacturing telephone apparatus and cables.
Later he was resident engineer in Spain with responsibility to the assistant general superintendent in London for the erection and starting up of a factory at Santander. In 1932 he took up an appointment as mechanical engineer to the River Great Ouse Catchment Board and continued in this work until his death, which occurred on 23rd March 1948, at the age of fifty-five. Mr. Pattison had been an Associate Member of the Institution since 1929."