Ernest Frederick Stephen Lang
Ernest Frederick Stephen Lang (1867-1940)
1941 Obituary [1]
ERNEST FREDERICK STEPHEN LANG had a long and distinguished career in the service of Messrs. Beyer, Peacock and Company, Ltd., Manchester, with whom he was connected for the whole of his professional life. He served his apprenticeship with the firm from 1885 to 1889, and after six months' special training in the steel foundry and chemical laboratory at the London and North Western Railway works at Crewe, he was employed from 1892 to 1897 in the drawing office and on research work. During this period he was sent at times to the Continent to study steelworks in Austria and Germany and to report on the use of the three-phase system of current generation for electrical power transmission.
In 1898, he was responsible for building a steel foundry at Gorton, with Siemens-Martin furnace plant, and in the following year he was made steel works manager. He was appointed technical engineer in 1906 and retained that position until he retired, after forty-six years' service, in 1931.
After his retirement he devoted much of his time to research in the historical side of engineering and became an authority on the sequence of developments and the achievements of leading engineers of the last century, many of whom he had known personally. Mr. Lang was born in 1867 and received his technical education at Owens College, Manchester, and at the Polytechnical University, Hanover, where he underwent special courses in engineering, electricity, and metallurgy.
He contributed many papers and articles on engineering subjects to various technical institutions, and was responsible for numerous scientific publications. He was elected a Member of the Institution in 1907 and was also an Associate Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. His death occurred at Torquay on 21st November 1940.