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:
“Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the grand-daughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you. The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said “On the line!” The Reconstruction said “Go!” I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)