Pump and Power Co
of London, engineers.
Established by Herbert Alfred Humphrey to develop the Humphrey Gas Pump.
A testing station was located at Tipton on a site belonging to the South Staffordshire Mond Gas Co. so that Mond gas was available for working the pumps, compressed air for starting, and electric current for lighting the building and charging the accumulators.
1913 'When Mr. H. A. Humphrey read his paper at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in the autumn of 1909 describing his revolutionary innovation in methods of raising water by gas-power, the Metropolitan Water Board had in progress at Chingford the construction of a large reservoir, to be filled by water pumped up from the Lea. The floods in the Lea come down with great rapidity, drainage works in the upper valley having reduced the flood period to less than one-third of its value in times past. As a consequence the floods are higher than formerly, but last for a much shorter time, and it was therefore necessary to provide for a very powerful pumping plant, in order to make possible the impounding of a fair proportion of such flood-waters. The lift being low and the quantity great, the use of ordinary reciprocating pumps was barred by considerations of capital cost, ..... Struck by the remarkable results recorded in Mr. Humphrey’s paper, Mr. W. B. Bryan, although certain portions of the work had already been started on the hypothesis that centrifugal pumps were to be used, decided to invite a tender from the Pump and Power Company, Limited, of 38, Victoria-street, S.W., in competition with builders of centrifugal pumping plant. The conditions required the set of pumps to have an aggregate capacity of 180,000,000 gallons a day, the lift being 25 ft. to 30 ft. ....' The article goes on to describe the installation at Chingford. The pumpys were made by Siemens Brothers and Co of Stafford.[1]