Robert Henry Baskerville
Robert Henry Baskerville (c1887-1943)
1944 Obituary [1]
ROBERT HENRY BASKERVILLE was the managing director of Messrs. Platt, Levick and Company, Ltd., makers of precision ground steel bars, Chester. He had held that position since his establishment of the firm in 1919. He received his technical education at the Municipal School of Technology, Manchester, subsequently attending further classes in electrical engineering. After the conclusion in 1909 of a five years' apprenticeship with Messrs. Mather and Platt of the same city, he continued in the service of that firm as an outside erector of gas engines and later for a brief period acted as assistant works manager in the gas engine department.
From 1915 to 1917 he occupied a similar position at the works of Messrs. Greenwood and Batley, of Leeds. In the latter year he initiated the design of special machinery for continuous grinding of steel bars for armour-piercing bullets, the plant being actually in production in a very few months and turning out work of national importance in the Great War. Two years later he began his long connection with Messrs. Pratt, Levick and Company, the machinery for which undertaking was made entirely to his own designs.
Mr. Baskerville was elected a Graduate of the Institution in 1910 and was transferred Associate Membership in 1912, and to Membership in 1937. His death occurred in November 1943, in his fifty-sixth year.