Guy Francis Dowding
Guy Francis Dowding (c1883-1947)
1948 Obituary [1]
"GUY FRANCIS DOWDING was a specialist in machine tool production, his first association with machine tools being with Messrs. Selig Sonnenthal and Company, Ltd., with whom he spent some ten years. Later he was manager with Messrs. W. A. Walber and Company, Ltd., for a similar period. After a visit to Russia in 1916 in connection with equipment for munition factories, he was appointed chief progress engineer in the controller's department of the Admiralty. From 1921 to 1925 he was in business on his own account as a machine tool engineer, and later he established the Birmingham Bureau of Standards and Measurements, Ltd., over which Professor Burstall of Birmingham University had technical control.
He then turned his attention to the importation of automatic weapons and for a number of years acted as representative of foreign firms engaged in their manufacture. Before the 1939-45 war he was appointed a director of Messrs. Tata, Ltd., on whose behalf he visited India, and retained this appointment until his retirement shortly after the end of the war. In 1938 he was attached to the machine tool control department of the Ministry of Supply as assistant controller, and five years later was appointed a technical director in the Ministry of Production. In 1945 he made an extensive tour of the United States and Canada, the strain of which brought about a severe heart condition leading to his long illness and untimely death at Barnes on 21st March 1947, in his sixty-fourth year. Mr. Dowding was elected an Associate Member of the Institution in 1925 and was transferred to Membership in 1943."