John Victor FOLL OBE (1901 - 1973)

The source of this biography is unknown.

"In the years around the second world war John Victor Foll was the man who lifted Muirheads of Beckenham out of the nineteenth century and planted it firmly in the twentieth. He was born in 1901, the son of John Hattil Foll master butcher of Stockwell London and his wife Kate. He went first to St. John's Bowyer primary school and then to Battersea Grammar School, winning prizes at both. In the last months of World War I he managed to get into the Royal Air Force but only for a day. He then joined the Western Union Telegraph Company as an operator training first in London and then in Ireland.

It is not clear exactly when he left the operating side but by the time he was twenty one he had a patent jointly with the Western Union on a system of multiplexing submarine telegraph cables which must have singled him out amongst his fellow operators. In the early 1920's he joined a firm of consulting engineers, Clark Ford & Taylor, the principal of which was E.H. Heurtley who designed what was probably the best of the pre-electronic amplifiers, the Heurtley Magnifier. Together he and Heurtley installed this and other terminal equipment in cable stations all over the world. Much of this equipment was made by Muirhead & Co. Ltd., of which Heurtley was a director and it was fairly natural that this dynamic young man should transfer to them and indeed, after the death of their managing director in 1928, that Foll should be appointed in his stead. He was still only 27 years old. He really could not have taken over at a worse time; the company was at its lowest ebb. In 1928 the number of employees had fallen to 85 and in 1930 the factory went on a four day week; the whole world was in a slump. Foll set himself to reorganise Muirheads. Its office system, letter copies were still produced in a letter press and filed in box files; its workshops which were antiquated and harked back to the days when the allowance of artificial light was one carbon filament lamp for a skilled instrument maker although the machine tools were first class; its catalogues of products which were 20 years old and many products dated from the 19th century. The submarine telegraph equipment developed by E.H. Heurtley and F.E. Muirhead was up-to-date and indeed pre‑eminent but the market was saturated and almost everything produced was individually hand made. Nothing seemed suitable for any mass market. The only field where their traditional expertise seemed capable of being transposed into quantity production was in the manufacture of electrical capacitors, condensers as they were called and it was to this that Foll directed his initial drive.

In the 1870's Dr Alexander Muirhead F.R.S. had put a great deal of thought and effort into the design and production of hand laid paper condensers and over the next 50 Year's Muirheads had amassed a great deal of expertise in this field. Foll realised that if he could marry Muirhead's traditional expertise with the new American rolled paper foil production techniques he might produce paper capacitors which were good, stable and competitive. He bought an American winding machine and made several copies. With these he went into the paper capacitor market which was growing up for the radio industry, then expanding for home broadcast receivers. It was a fiercely competitive business but in the event it kept cash flowing and helped to tide the firm over the worst period in its history.

In parallel with the expansion of the condenser business he produced a new instrument catalogue which was impressive but of little use since there was no market for submarine telegraph cable equipment and at that time the measuring equipment listed really dated from the last century. But in spite of the time it took to design products, work was being pushed on in this direction by a few young engineers taken on for the purpose. The aim was one new instrument a month and by taking designs from University and Government laboratories and twisting them into commercial products a very wide range of telecommunication measuring instruments was built up in the years up to and including world war II.

But, in spite of the final success the 1930 decade was a testing time and on two occasions heavy losses were encountered and disaster only averted by substantial injections of capital by F.H. Muirhead. The advent of World War II gave Muirheads a new lease of life. Government contracts for their sort of work were available for the asking, and research and testing laboratories in Government departments and the universities absorbed their output of the precision measuring equipment developed in the previous decade. Rebuilding work and extensions were pushed forward with the knowledge that all costs were virtually underwritten by the government. In this way the factory buildings of 1895 were modernised and extended until the whole site was filled productively and further space was acquired nearby. By the end of the war the work force, which in 1928 was under 100, had risen to over 2,000. How to keep even a fraction of that number at work in peacetime was Foll's major problem as the war ended. The company's reputation for laboratory instruments was high and the developing technology of the time fostered the demand. A small technical sales force was established which kept this section of the works busy. One group of components produced in large quantities during the war turned out to have a peacetime demand for control purposes, particularly on civil and military aircraft. This was Magslips and Synchros. But to keep the factory full something else was required. He found this in Picture Telegraphy for the Newspapers, Facsimile as it is now known. Before the war two European firms had produced this: Belin in France and Siemens in Germany. In 1945 both were virtually out of action. The Daily Mail approached Muirheads and Foll very wisely employed their communications manager, F.W. Jarvis as a consultant. Muirhead's expertise just fitted the requirements and in 1945/46 the team of laboratory and drawing office staff built up from 1930 onwards, designed, produced and demonstrated Picture Telegraph equipment for the Newspapers for which substantial orders were immediately available.

The three groups of products thus established at the end of the war were destined to set the pattern of Muirhead products and interests for the next thirty years and Muirhead's growth was a measure of Foll's achievement. Much of it was overseas with selling and manufacturing units being set up in Europe and North America. Sales which in 1932 were down to ¨£26,000 with a loss of ¨£5,000 Y!ere up to nearly ¨£380,000 by 1948 with a profit of close on ¨£54,000. By 1960 when it became a public company sales were over ¨£2,000,000 - and profit approached ¨£368,000. By the time Foll retired in 1965 sales were up to ¨£4, 454,000 and Profits ¨£715,000.

This description of the progress of Muirheads from 1928 to 1965 is a record of the achievements of J.V. Foll over the same period. Nothing however has been said of what sort of man he was. Extremely hard working he certainly was and he worked to some purpose. Furthermore he had great charm of manner and opposition seemed to melt away before him. He was very much a man of his time and did most ordinary things extremely well from sharpening a pencil. which was a joy to watch, to driving his car, which he wore like a garment. His signature, J.V. Foil, was simple, legible and a pleasing embellishment to all his paperwork.

He directed Muirhead with a sort of despotic paternalism and most of his employees and associates liked and trusted him; he was very good company. He did not always see reason and on fortunately rare occasions, could be incredibly stubborn; but the record of the progress of Muirheads during the thirty odd years of his reign shows one thing quite clearly, he was more often right than wrong. He worked so hard and to such purpose that he managed with relatively few staff of superior ability, so that when he did retire he left a gap that took some filling. . . ."

Publications

Newspaper Facsimile Equipment, The Penrose Annual Vol. 54 1960 pp 78-81"

British Patents:

196,980 (1923)	239,562 (1925)	254,842 (1926)	255,979 (1926)
257,001 (1926)	264,694 (1927)	273,398 (1927)	274,186 (1927)
299,593 (1928)	307,855 (1929)	326,839 (1930)	420,809 (1935)
476,584 (1936)

John GOTT (1840 - 1914)

First Superintendent at the St Pierre Miquelon telegraph station

Born Kendal (Cumbria), worked for the Electric and International Telegraph Co

1864	Selected to join electrical staff on Great Eastern
1869	Appointed Supt of St Pierre
1870	Transmitted wireless over 3 miles
1870	Invented fault searcher coil (see JSTE vol. XV p. 345)
1881	Introduced modification for Kelvin's formulae for cables
1884	Resigned from French Co.
1884	Appointed Chief Electrician of Commercial Cable Co (remained until his death)
1914	Died Brighton 8 March

Membership lists in IEE journals give his addresses as

1887	12 Richmond St., Weston-Super-Mare
1889	4 Bramhall Villa, Station Road, Harlesdon
1890	10 Lorna Rd., Hove, Brighton

Robert Charles HALPIN

1836	Born Wicklow, Ireland. Youngest of ten children
1846	Went to sea as cabin boy on brig Britain on North American trade
1850	Seaman and mate on barque Henry Tanner on Australian and North American trade
1852-55	3rd and 2nd officers on clippers Salem and Boomerang on Australian and Indian trade
1858	In command of ss Propellor and Circassian in the service of Atlantic Mail Co.
1859	In command of ss Argo - later wrecked off Newfoundland (but not under his command)
1860	Employed by Spanish government to fit and deliver Atlantic troopships Isla de Cuba and Isla de Puerto Rico
1860	Joined ss Victoria as commanding officer in transport service (6 months)
1861-64	Commanded ss Sylph, Harriet, Pinkney Eugeno, Emily and Viking
1864	Fitted out ss City of New York, Resigned to take up appointment as first officer on Great Eastern
1866	Appointed to command cs Hawk for the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Co.
1868	Awarded ¨£6,000 by Anglo American Telegraph Co. for his efforts in repairing their 1866 trans-Atlantic cable
1868	November - appointed Master of the Great Eastern upon the resignation of Sir James Anderson.
1869	Great Eastern laid the Brest-St Pierre cable for the French Co. Jules Verne was on board and described Halpin as "an active little man with a very sunburnt skin, a black beard almost covering his face and legs which defied every lurch of the vessel".
1873	Oversaw the laying of the 1873 Valentia-Heart's Content cable. This cable was known as 1VA in the Western Union days
1874	Laid the1874 Heart's Content-Valentia cable. First time that a full west to east lay had been undertaken. It was also the fastest and shortest cable to be laid up to that time. Cable known as 2VA following the Western Union takeover.
1875	Took Great Eastern to Milford Haven for her final laying up
1875	Appointed Marine Superintendent for Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Co.
1880	His home, Tinakilly House in Rathnew, near Wicklow in Ireland was completed
	after 10 years at a cost of ¨£40,000
1885	Stood as Unionist candidate for East Wicklow - not elected
1892	Appointed Deputy Lieutenant for Co. Wicklow (1 November)
1894	Died 20 January. Buried in Wicklow Church of Ireland Cemetery

His wife was a member of the Munn family, maritime merchants from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland. The Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador in St Johns have an atlas which he presented to his father-in-law. A large collection of Halpin artefacts, uniforms etc are lodged at the National Maritime Museum of Ireland in Dun Laoghaire. This includes a model of the Great Eastern as she was modified for cable laying. For some time after 1866 the Anglo American Telegraph Co permitted him to send social messages to his in-laws free of charge. This privilege was eventually revoked on the grounds that he was not infrequently transmitting commercially useful information in these telegrams.

There is a monument to Halpin in the centre of Wicklow Town. Two grand nieces (the misses Kent) were still living in Wicklow in July 1984.

John MOORES

Born 25 January 1896 in Eccles, Lancashire where his father was the local butcher and bricklayer. At 14 he was a Post Office indoor messenger boy earning 16 shillings per week while doing a correspondence course for the Civil Service and attending night school to learn telegraphy. Sacked from the Post Office because he would not do exactly as he was told he was taken on as a trainee telegraphist by the Commercial Cable Company. At the completion of his training he worked in their Forster Square offices in Manchester. During the First World Ward he volunteered for the Navy and in 1916 was a wireless operator in Aberdeen before being posted elsewhere

He returned to the Commercial Cable Co in March 1919 and was sent to Waterville in Ireland. He augmented his income by starting a small company (the Waterville Supply Co) to import 'luxury' goods (books, stationery, golf-balls etc). These were peddled (without the knowledge of his employer) amongst the staff at the Waterville, Ballinskelligs and Valentia cable stations. The 1922 civil war which followed Irish independence completely disrupted the cable telegraph stations and this may have been the reason why Moores was called back to UK and sent to the Commercial's offices in Liverpool. While there and looking for new ways of making money he came upon the concept of football pools. He and two telegraph colleagues, Colin Askham and Bill Hughes each put ¨£50 into the venture. Askham provided the name Littlewoods which set up in business in 1923. Things did not go well at first and by the time that each had lost ¨£200 his partners wanted to quit. With the help of his family and the strong support of his wife he bought them out, parted company with his employers and Littlewoods Pools had made him a millionaire by 1932. That year, remembering the shopping company that he had run from Waterville, he set up Littlewoods Mail Order. He opened four Littlewoods stores in 1937, twelve in 1938 so that by 1939 there were 25 in operation with many more planned. The second world war interrupted his plans but he committed his entire organization to war activity. The successful expansion of all parts continued after the war and Moores retired from his position as Chairman in 1982. He was a significant benefactor of Liverpool and was twice Chairman of Everton Football Club. He was knighted in 1980. On his death on 25 September 1993 his estate was valued at ¨£10m.

John Moores and Ezra Cornell are amongst the few telegraphers who have had an academic institution named after them. Under the terms of the 1992 UK Further and Higher Education Act Liverpool Polytechnic became Liverpool John Moores University.