Great Depression and WW2
The company flourished throughout the Great Depression and the Second World War. By 1930 it had 12 UK sales and service branches, a valuable asset for customers before reliable car travel was available. Issued capital was seven times greater than 1899 and profits were ten times greater.
WW2 saw a much higher percentage of BUSM’s precision engineering capacity switched to manufacturing arms than in WW1. Products included Naval gun sights and the technically very demanding precision cast wheelhouse for the Rolls-Royce Merlin aero engine.
Post war, BUSM was an early user of numerical control machines with the prototype Kearns horizontal boring machine now in Manchester Institute of Technology museum being installed in 1949.
Read more about this topic: British United Shoe Machinery
Famous quotes containing the word depression:
“The chief lesson of the Depression should never be forgotten. Even our liberty-loving American people will sacrifice their freedom and their democratic principles if their security and their very lives are threatened by another breakdown of our free enterprise system. We can no more afford another general depression than we can afford another total war, if democracy is to survive.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)