JANE’S ART PART 1

A FELLOW NAMED JANE WAS a fin-de-siecle gamer with a special interest in naval battles. Wikipedia recounts, “He first began to sketch warships in his teens, and was notable in the 1890s for illustrating scientific romances by George Griffith and other authors, as well as for his own science fiction novels such as To Venus in Five Seconds (published in 1897) and The Violet Flame (1899).”

We know him as Fred T. Jane,  compiler of All the World’s Fighting Ships, 1898, and All the World’s Airships, 1909, subsequent editions of which were known as Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft. Two of these historical sources have appeared here at SimanaitisSays: “Aero History—A Century Ago” gleaned tidbits from Jane’s Historical Aircraft From 1902 to 1916; a second one took examples from Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft 1913. 

Wikipedia notes, “After catching a chill while on a speaking tour in December 1915, Jane became ill, and in March 1916, died alone in his apartment from influenza and heart congestion.” He was 50. 

Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft 1919. Charles Grey Grey, CG as he was known, was founding editor of the British weekly The Aeroplane and became second editor of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, 1916–1936.

Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft 1919 is noteworthy for a number of its aviation industry advertisements and technical illustrations, tidbits of which follow here in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow.

Familiar Names. Several companies arose with the burgeoning aviation industry. For example, English physicist Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) discovered that the electricity of a lightening rod would jump a gap, essentially taking the shortest path. As described in Hemmings, “It wasn’t Oliver Lodge who developed the spark plugs that took the Lodge name, but rather two of his 12 children, sons Brodie and Alec, who, in 1903, at the respective ages of 23 and 22, filed a patent for a high-tension ignition system. As the brothers worked on their ignition and sparking system, they formed Lodge Brothers in Birmingham in 1904.”

The company’s “sparking” plugs continued to be successful, notes Hemmings, “including under the hood of the Le Mans-winning Jaguar D-type and the insane BRM V-16 Formula 1 engine…. Lodge advertised supplying no fewer than nine cars at the 1957 Indianapolis 500, and providing the spark for the top two finishers at Sebring that year as well.”

Lodge eventually was acquired by Smiths Industries, eventually being spun off to its current owner, Swiss-based Meggitt Sensing Systems. 

Smiths Instruments are well known to anyone admiring a British car dashboard. Back in 1919, its Jane’s advertisement noted, “During the war (now happily ended) Messrs. S, Smith and Sons, (M.A.) Ltd., have produced more Aviation Instruments for the British and Allied Governments than any other firm.”

More Than Just Wire Wheels. Rudge-Whitworth’s Aeronautical Dept. supplied “Planes [i.e., wings] , Rudders, Ailerons, Elevators, Tails, Skids,” and other components. The firm was established in 1894 with the merger of two bicycle manufacturers, Whitworth Cycle founded by Charles Henry Pugh and Rudge Cycle which evolved from a bicycle maker Daniel Rudge. Wikipedia describes, “In the early 1900s John Pugh, son of company founder Charles Pugh and a pioneer motorist, decided that there had to be a better way of dealing with punctured tyres than having to change the tyre with the wheel still fixed to the car. In competition with Victor Riley of the Riley Cycle Company they both designed a detachable wheel locked in place by a single large nut. Pugh was granted a patent for his wheel in 1908.

Wikipedia continues, “There were detailed differences in the design resulting in legal disputes between the two companies over the intellectual rights to the detachable wheel. Pugh eventually lost the dispute following appeal to the House of Lords.”

“The system,” Wikipedia describes, “was taken up enthusiastically by the racing fraternity where the advantage of a quick change wheel was obvious. At the 1908 Isle of Man TT race, 21 of the 35 entrants used Rudge-Whitworth wheels, and only one of the finishers didn’t. By 1913, the use of detachable wire wheels was universal in grands prix…. After World War II the rights to the Rudge-Whitworth wheel was acquired by Jaguar Cars.”

Tomorrow in Part 2, we’ll move away from advertising to admire the technical art of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft 1919. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2023