John Smith Raworth
John Smith Raworth (1846-1917), chief engineer to Brush Electrical Co and later technical director of British Electric Traction Co
His brother was Benjamin Alfred Raworth
1881 Charles Mark Dorman and Reginald Arthur Smith joined Mr. J. S. Raworth as his assistants.
When Mr. Raworth left Manchester, Mr. Dorman and Mr. Smith took over the small works which he had established and gradually developed the business which became Dorman and Smith Ltd.
1895 John Smith Raworth of Streatham patented a steam engine in many countries (Great Britain, No. 4,442, dated March 1, 1895, and No. 24,751, dated July 9, 1895). Patented in the USA in 1897. US Patent here.
1911 Living at 46 Christchurch Road, Brixton: John Smith Raworth (age 65 born York), Civil Engineer, Company Director. With his wife Margaret Carrington and their daughter.[1]
1917 Obituary[2]
"BY the death of Mr. John Smith Raworth, which occurred on the l4th inst., there has been lost to the engineering profession one of the early pioneers in the application of electricity to industrial uses, and, moreover, one of the early pioneers who was also an engineer. Mr Raworth was born in Sheffield on June 1st, 1846, and he was therefore a man of over thirty before electric lighting began to make any headway. Consequently he had received his engineering education and had had much mechanical experience before it came to his lot to tackle the numerous problems which the introduction of the new form of energy presented. He was in fact among the very few who, in the early days, were, what might be termed electrical engineers, in contradistinction the electrician, pure and simple.
Mr. Raworth served his apprenticeship with R. and W. Hawthorn of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and afterwards occupied the post of draughtsman to Messrs Wren and Hopkinson, of Manchester. Towards the end of the 70s there was a demand for young men to undertake the introduction of electric lighting, and Mr. Raworth saw his opportunity. He entered the employment of Messrs Siemens Bros and for a number of years he represented that firm in the Manchester district. As was hardly to be wondered at considering the firm with which he had served his firm, he devoted much time and attention to installation of electric light on shipboard, in which direction the adoption of electric lighting was much more rapid at the commencement than was the case on land. He was responsible for fitting up , amongst others, the following liners:- Alaska, Arizona, Aurania, Austral, Britannic, City of Berlin, City of Rome, and Orient. But it was not only the electric equipment of steamships on which Mr. Raworth was engaged during the busy years of his life in Manchester. On the contrary, he was responsible for the erection of the majority of the more important electric lighting plants which were put to work during that period, and it is recorded that he also installed the first electrically worked lift to be operated in this country. We gather that he also started and worked a small central generating station from which he distributed current to consumers in the immediate neighbourhood .
In 1886 Mr. Raworth came to London to take up the responsible position of chief engineer to what was then the Anglo-American Brush Electric Light Corporation and which is now the Brush Electrical Engineering Co., Limited. At the time the firm occupied Victoria Works, Belvedere-road, Lambeth, and it was engaged largely on the reproduction of dynamos of American design. But with Mr. Raworth as chief engineer, and Mr. W. M. Mordey as chief electrician, the company was about to enter upon a new era . The design of pre-existing machines was drastically revised, and though the original Brush arc machine did not prove to be susceptible of much alteration, improvements in the designs of other dynamos, which were at that time all of the direct current type, very soon began to make their appearance, all of them embodying greater mechanical strength. A large portion of the company's business, owing doubtless to Mr. Raworth's earlier connections , was at that time in combined ship lighting plants. At first high speed Browett Lindley engines were employed to provide the motive power, but, later, Mr. Raworth designed a special type of engine for the work . It was under him, too , that the company supplied its first train lighting plants for use on the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. The machines used for that purpose were of the Brush arc type specially wound for train lighting work so as to give what was very nearly a steady voltage over a range of speed.
Very soon, however, new types of machines began to make their appearance . At first the firm made no alternators. Then came the introduction of the spider-poled Mordey alternator , the mechanical details of which had to be worked out under Mr. Raworth's supervision. For the alternating current all sorts of fresh switchgear had to be evolved, and though attempts in this line were very far removed in excellence from the equipment of the present day, they were none the less ingenious and served their purpose well.
Two methods of driving dynamos which were developed by Mr. Raworth early in his connection with the Brush Company were his friction drive and his endless rope drive. For the first he mounted the dynamo to be driven on a platform forming part of the engine frame, arranging matters so that the fly-wheel of the engine, the periphery of which was wound, we believe, with paper, came into contact with a paper-wound pulley on the dynamo shaft. The amount of pressure between the two faces could be adjusted by means of compressing or decompressing a system of springs. A plant of this type was at work for many years supplying current for the incandescent lighting of the works. In the endless rope drive a spliced rope was taken continuously over the grooves of the fly-wheel and pulley, there being a system of adjustable jockey pulleys to take the rope from one end of the flywheel to the opposite end of the dynamo pulley and lead it straight on to the latter. This method of driving was employed for quite a number of the smaller sized generating stations. For higher powers Mr. Raworth designed a special type of vertical engine to which he gave the name of the "Universal".
One of the principal lighting stations which were equipped by the Brush Company while Mr. Raworth was chief engineer, was that of the City of London Electric Lighting Co., at Bankside. Others were those at Bournemouth, Hanley, Huddersfield, Leicester, &c. The development of the company's operations consequent on the wider introduction of electric lighting brought about the need for additional manufacturing capacity. The old Victoria Works were unsuited for the building of large machines. For a good many years after Mr. Raworth joined the firm the largest machine made was not above 60 kilowatts in output. A few alternators of larger power were, it is true, made there, but they caused great inconvenience in the shops and could not be tested to their full capacity. Moreover, being in London, rates and other expenses were high, and labour was dear. Finally it was decided to take the Falcon Works at Loughborough and to equip them for the purposes of manufacturing electrical machinery. The arrangement and equipment of these works were in charge of Mr. Raworth.
When all was ready and the move made, Mr. Raworth resigned his position as chief engineer, and was given a seat on the Board. He then started in business on his own account as a consulting engineer in Westminster, his chief speciality being electric traction, a subject which had always interested him. For some time previously he had been technical advisor to the British Electric Traction Company, and eventually he became technical director of it. One of his first works after commencing practice at Westminster was to perfect and introduce his system of regenerative control for tramway systems. He was also responsible for several lighting and power systems.
Mr. Raworth will be missed by a wide circle of friends and by none more so than by those who worked under him. To them was always a considerate and just superior officer who, though he got a great deal of work out of those in subordinate positions, never treated them with anything but marked courtesy , and there will be many who will regret that "J. S. R.," as he was invariably called by old " Brushites ," will be seen no more amongst them."