Frederick Walter Baynes
Frederick Walter Baynes (1868-1928)
1929 Obituary [1]
FREDERICK WALTER BAYNES had a highly-developed inventive faculty and drew royalties from many successful inventions, especially relating to irrigation machinery. In recent years he had devoted his attention to experimental work in sound-reproducing apparatus and the development of domestic refrigerators.
He was born at Bedford in 1868, and after serving an apprenticeship in the Midland Railway shops at Derby went to Melbourne in 1887, where he gained a varied experience in electrical work, becoming in 1892 engineer to the first tramway company in Australia, the line running between Boxhill and Doncaster.
After five years as a consulting engineer in Melbourne Mr. Baynes returned to London, and for eight years drew a good income from the sale of his own inventions.
From 1906 to 1914 he was engaged with Messrs. Malcomess and Company of East London, South Africa, becoming their chief engineer. During this period he carried out many irrigation pumping schemes and invented special forms of pumping machinery which were widely adopted.
In March 1914 he again returned to England and founded a business of his own. The War, however, frustrated its development, and in 1915 he joined Messrs. Creed and Company, telegraph instrument makers, of East Croydon, as maintenance engineer.
At the end of the War Mr. Baynes retired and devoted himself to experimental work, on which he was actively engaged until his death on 7th January 1929.
He became an Associate Member of the Institution in 1911 and a Member in 1913.