Alfred Herbert

Sir Alfred Edward Herbert KBE (5 September 1866 – 26 May 1957) was an English industrialist and museum benefactor. He moved to Coventry in 1887 to manage a small engineering business which grew to become Alfred Herbert Limited, one of the world's largest manufacturers and distributors of machine tools.

Career

Born in Leicester and educated at Stoneygate House School in Leicester, Alfred Herbert became an apprentice at Joseph Jessop & Sons, crane builders in 1884.

In 1887 he moved to Coventry to become manager of Coles & Matthews, a small engineering business where his brother, William, was director. In 1888 he went into partnership with William Hubbard. They bought C&M for £2,375 and traded as Herbert & Hubbard. Herbert bought out Hubbard in 1894 and the company was incorporated under the name Alfred Herbert Limited: a company that would become one of the World's largest manufacturers and distributors of machine tools. During World War I Herbert became Controller of machine tools for the Ministry of Munitions. He was knighted in 1917 and appointed an Officer in the Belgian Order of Leopold and an Officer in the French Légion d'honneur in 1919.

Alfred Herbert (disambiguation)

Alfred Herbert may refer to:

Alfred Herbert (company)

Alfred Herbert Ltd was one of the world's largest machine tool manufacturing businesses. It was at one time the largest British machine tool builder.

History

The business was founded in 1888 when Alfred Herbert and William Hubbard purchased for £2,375 a small engineering business in Coventry.Herbert & Hubbard initially made boilers and steam engines. The firm, in Roderick Floud's paraphrasing of Herbert, "came into machine tool production by accident when Alfred Herbert secured the agency for a French patent of great value in the manufacture of tubes for the fast expanding cycle trade in Coventry. On the basis of his profits from this patent the company began to make machine tools for the cycle trade."

In 1894 Hubbard was bought out and the business continued as Alfred Herbert Ltd focusing on machine tools. The number of employees rose from 180 in 1897 to 1,400 by 1908.

Regarding the differences (real or supposed) between American and British practice in the latter half of the 19th century, Floud said that Herbert was "the [British] firm often held up as an example of the use of American techniques" [which sometimes emphasised focus on a narrow range of machines by any one builder] but that even Herbert "rejected the idea that the firm should specialize in a few types of machinery" [to the exclusion of a diverse mix of products]. He quoted Herbert as saying that "the cycle business, which was our principal customer, required in those days a variety of machines, and not many of them of one kind."

Alfred Herbert (painter)

Alfred Herbert (died 1861), was an English watercolour painter.

Herbert was the son of a Thames waterman, who apprenticed him to a boatbuilder, but, yielding to a strong natural inclination, he became an artist. He began to exhibit with the Society of British Artists in 1844, and at the Royal Academy in 1847, his subjects being coast scenes, with fishing-boats and figures, and views in the lower reaches of the Thames. He sent an oil picture to Suffolk Street in 1855, and continued a regular contributor of water-colours at the Royal Academy until 1860. Though he was entirely self-taught, his works displayed remarkable vigour and genius, but they failed to meet with general appreciation, and he could only dispose of them to the dealers at extremely low prices. He died suddenly at the beginning of 1861, leaving a widow and seven children in distressed circumstances. The South Kensington Museum possesses two examples of his art.

References

 "Herbert, Alfred". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.