David Brown Santasalo, formerly David Brown Engineering, is an English engineering company, principally engaged in the manufacture of gears and gearboxes. Their major gear manufacturing plant is in Swan Lane, Lockwood, Huddersfield, adjacent to Lockwood railway station. It is named after the company's founder, David Brown, though it is more closely associated with his grandson, Sir David Brown (1904–1993).
History
David Brown
Founded in 1860 as a pattern manufacturing company, by 1873 David Brown had begun to concentrate on gear systems and by 1898 was specialising in machine-cut gears.
The company moved in 1902 to Park Works, Huddersfield, where the firm is based today.
David Brown & Sons, Huddersfield (the Huddersfield group) When David Brown died in 1903, his sons Percy and Frank took over and began the manufacture of gears, complete gear units, gear cutting machines, tools and equipment, bearings and shafts and worm drive gears. Its foundry makes steel and non-ferrous castings. Including motor vehicles, aircraft, ships as well as a wide range of British industry.
From 1908 to 1915, David Brown and Sons designed, developed and made the Valveless car under engineer Frederick Tasker Burgess (1879–1929), later chief engineer at Humber, and later still one of the team that developed the first 3-litre Bentley engine.
In 1913, they established a joint venture in America with Timken for Radicon worm drive units. By the end of World War I the workforce had increased from 200 to 1,000 as they started building propulsion units for warships, and drive mechanisms for armaments. By 1921 the company was the largest worm gear manufacturer in the world.
In 1930 the company took over PR Jackson another local firm of gear manufacturers and steel founders. Percy's eldest son (Sir David Brown) became managing director in 1931 following Percy's death in June that year. WS Roe was appointed joint managing director with David but he died in April 1933. Percy was appointed chairman. The firm formed another overseas joint venture with Richardson Gears of Footscray, Victoria, Australia, in 1934. In 1934 the company moved into an old Silk Mill on a site at Meltham, on the south side of Huddersfield. Brown started building tractors with Harry Ferguson there in 1936.
The company obtained a patent for a tank transmission using controlled differential steering system, known as the Merritt-Brown system, devised by Henry Merritt, Director of Tank Design at Woolwich Arsenal, in 1935. The first vehicle to use this system was the Churchill tank, and it was subsequently used on the Centurion tank and the Conqueror tank, as well as the Tortoise heavy tank.
In 1951 the Huddersfield and Tractor groups freehold land and buildings at Huddersfield, Penistone and Meltham were on sites covering about 150 acres (61 ha). Another 260,000 sq ft of floor space were held under lease.
Gearing manufactured by David Brown and powered by electric motors manufactured by Brook Crompton, whose factory was in Brockholes, are used to rotate the top of the BT Tower in London.
David Brown Tractors Group
Personally controlled since its inception by David Brown (1904–1993) the first venture into tractor production was in a joint project with Harry Ferguson in 1936 building the Ferguson-Brown tractor. David Brown became one of the biggest British tractor manufactures in the post war period, with a major manufacturing plant at Meltham, West Yorkshire England. The company broke new ground which others were only to follow later, but being a pioneering company ultimately led to its downfall. The Ferguson-Brown had many innovative features, including the use of cast alloy for many the components, which was light but prone to damage. The Ferguson-Brown used a Coventry Climax engine for the first 350 tractors. Browns developed their own engine which was fitted to subsequent production. Total production was 1350 + 1 built from parts in 1940 after production finished.
Brown and Ferguson disagreed over tractor design details in the late 30s, which led David Brown to design his own version, the VAK1, in secret. This was launched at the 1939 Royal Show. Ferguson split away from Brown and joined up with Henry Ford in 1938, after a 'handshake' agreement, to allow his Ferguson System three-point linkage to be used on the Fordson N tractors. That agreement was eventually terminated by Ford's grandson in 1947 and Ferguson again split away to form Ferguson Tractors in 1948.