Abstract
THE many friends of Col. R. E. B. Crompton, F.R.S., are organising a banquet to be given in his honour on May 31, which will be his ninetieth birthday. At this banquet he will be presented with his portrait, and he has signified that his intention is to present it to the Institution of Electrical Engineers. Col. Crompton has had a wonderful life. He still talks about the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851 as if it were an affair of yesterday. At the age of eleven, he enrolled as a cadet in the Royal Navy, and before reaching the age of twelve received the Crimean War medal and Sebastopol clasp. In 1864 he was gazetted into the Rifle Brigade, and did much for road transport in India by helping to substitute road engines for bullock trains. He began work as an electrical engineer in a small way at Chelmsford in 1878, but in 1881 at the Paris Exhibition he gained the first gold medal ever given for electric lighting plant. In 1886 we find him, with the warm approval of the Emperor Francis Joseph, supplying the Opera House in the Ring Street in Vienna with the electric light; and he soon found it necessary to open a branch in Vienna. He took a leading part in the South African War, designing traction engines fitted with dynamos and portable searchlights. He also saw much active service. During the War of 1914-18 he did very valuable work in connexion with ‘tanks'. He has always had an unflagging interest in motor vehicles and in the adaptation of roads for their use. Those who use our highways owe him a deep debt of gratitude. He has been a member of the councils of the Institutions of Civil and Electrical Engineers longer than anyone else.
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Col. Crompton's Ninetieth Birthday. Nature 135, 423 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135423b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135423b0