Charles Eustace Shann
Charles Eustace Shann (1879-1948)
1949 Obituary [1]
"CHARLES EUSTACE SHANN, during the earlier portion of his professional career had considerable experience as an electrical engineer, but of recent years he had been chiefly concerned with general mechanical engineering.
He was born in 1879 and educated privately. His technical training was obtained at the Wolverhampton Technical School and at Finsbury Technical College, where he attended classes in electrical and mechanical engineering. Later he took a civil engineering course at the Birmingham Technical Institute.
After serving a three years' apprenticeship at the experimental works of the late Mr. Thomas Parker in Wolverhampton he found his first employment in 1900 as power-house superintendent to the British Electric Traction Company, Ltd. He then gained further experience in the United States as assistant on tramways construction to the Loraine Steel Co, of Pennsylvania, and during 1906 and 1907 was engaged on the construction and equipment of a power house in Brazil for the Brush Electric Co, of Loughborough.
During the war of 1914-18 he was one of the staff of a British mission to the U.S.A. in connection with the inspection of steel and munitions of war and in 1917 was granted the rank of lieutenant in a territorial battalion. Shortly after his demobilization he was for a brief period manager of Messrs. Webb's Crystal Glass Company, Ltd. On the conclusion of a three years' engagement with Messrs. Armstrong Whitworth and Company, Ltd., as engineer in charge of workshop construction, he went to Germany in 1925 as inspecting engineer for Messrs. Heap and Digby, consulting engineers, Westminster. In the following year he began to practise on his own account as a consulting and inspecting engineer, and in 1939 became an inspector at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich.
Later he was appointed government inspector for Southern Rhodesia, and continued in that work until his death. Mr. Shann was elected an Associate Member of the Institution in 1927 and was transferred to Membership in 1933. His death occurred on 11th March 1948."