| Notes |
- Dr Norman Maclaren 1880 to 1936.
Born 1880, Scotland
Died 22 june 1937, Glasgow, Scotland
Son of Robert Maclaren 1817-1889 and Mary Jane Findlay.
Husband of Margaret Garnet 1894-1989. Father of Patrica, Ian, Peter, &David
Worked at Glasgow University and had done work for the Royal GeographicSociety on trips to such places as the McKenzie river Alaska, Borneo, andTibet. Studied at Glasgow University and at the University of Heidelbergin Germany from where he recieved a Ph.D.
In the early 1900 Norman Maclaren had traveled through Alaska with a teamof husky dogs and a Chinese cook, making the first map of large areas ofAlaska, breaking an arm in a crevasse and setting it himself. He was afellow of the Royal Geographic Society and the Linean Society.
Note from one of Norman Maclaren's sons, Ian G Maclaren's life story.
"During WW1 the family moved to Glasgow for a couple of years asGrandfather (Norman Maclaren) was asked to work at Glasgow University aslecturer of anatomy. Out of this job he became very interested inembryology and that became his life's work. He made ovens to grow theembryos and developed thermostats to keep the temperature constant in theovens. The development of these thermostats which they then sold to otheruniversities became one of Norman's "little firms" of which he hadseveral. Robert Maclaren, one of his older brothers, (20 years older)put $20,000.00 into the firm and then subsidized it for years. He nevergot a penny out of it. Maclarens as such never made a lot of money untilIGM took charge after WWII."
Deeshome was built by Norman Maclaren in approx. 1913, but he never likedit, and they moved to Cubreshaw, East Kilbride, after the WW I.
Obituary from the Glasgow Herald, 24th June 1937
"LOSS TO GLASGOW UNIVERSITY. DEATH OF LECTURER IN EMBRYOLOGY .
The death occurred on Tuesday at his home, Cubrieshaw, West Kilbride, ofDr Norman H. W. Maclaren who has been lecturer in embryology in theAnatomy Department of Glasgow University since the end of the war.
Dr Maclaren played an important part in embryological research in thiscountry during recent years.
Dr Maclaren, who was about 55 years of age, belonged to Glasgow. While astudent in Glasgow University he was attracted to biological science, andin his early manhood he occupied a post as demonstrator in the Departmentof Zoology at the University under the late Professor Young.
Later he studied extensively abroad and travelled in various parts of theworked conducting biological research. At Jena he worked as assistant tothe famous Professor Haeckel, and also studied and worked in the marinebiological station at Naples. He held the degree of Ph.D. of HeidelbergUniversity.
As war service he joined the teaching staff of the Anatomy Department ofGlasgow University and since the end of the war has been lecturer inembryology.
He was associated with Professor T.H. Bryce, who retired from the Chairof Anatomy 18 months ago, and took an important part with Professor Brycein building up the collection of human and other mammalian embryos in theUniversity. He also conducted important researches in the early stagesof the development of several mammalian forms, reports of which werepublished in the proceedings of the Royal Society and elsewhere.
Dr Maclaren had an unrivalled knowledge of laboratory techniques and wasof an inventive turn of mind.
An example of his inventive powers was provided by a thermostatic controlwhich he produced during his work at the University. He and his brother,the late Mr Robert Maclaren, patented the control and formed a company tomarket the invention, which is now extensively used for many purposes.The early experimental models to the control were tried out in connectionwith the biological ovens in the Anatomy Department of the University.
Dr Maclaren is survived by his wife, three sons, and one daughter."
From Angela Elliott about the Maclaren river & glacier.
"I received info from the University in Juneau to the effect that theMaclaren glacier and river were named for Norrie Maclaren, who had lead aparty of gold prospectors up river. At a fork in the river the partysplit and Maclaren led the party up one arm, whilst his compatriot led aparty up the other. Maclaren failed to find gold, but the other partywere successful and the leader of that party named the river and glacierafter Norrie Maclaren in recompense for his failure. "
Alaska Range and Maclaren River viewpoint
MP 37.0/98.0 (Found athttp://www.ak.blm.gov/gdo/DenaliHwy/denali.html)
"You are now at an elevation of about 4,000 feet, just a short distancefrom the Maclaren Summit (4,086'), the second highest highway summit inAlaska. Stop and enjoy the panoramic view of the Alaska Range and theMaclaren River. Mt. Hayes (13,832') and the Maclaren River and Glacierare dominant features, but Aurora Peak, Mt. Shand and Mt. Geist may alsobe seen. The Maclaren River flows from the Maclaren Glacier south to theSusitna River and then into Cook Inlet just west of Anchorage.
Vegetation at this elevation is low-growing alpine tundra. Wildflowersbloom in abundance during the short Alaskan summer (June and July). Lookfor pikas, ground squirrels and ptarmigan"
STORIES
Stories we heard from our grandmother, Granny Mac, wife of Dr NormanMaclaren our grandfather.
The Husky.
While in Alaska/Canada on one occasion he came across a group of men whowhere getting ready to shoot a very fine looking husky. Dr Norman askwhat was going on and was told the dog was uncontrollable, and had triedon several occasions to attack its owners.
Dr Norman agreed to buy it, but as soon as it was untied it attacked himand he had to knock it unconscious. He then tied the unconscious dog to asmall tree by his tent and left a large bowl of food beside it.
In the morning he awoke to find the dog sleeping beside him in the tent.It had eaten the food, chewed its way through the tree to release therope, and crawled into his tent. From then on the dog was incredibleloyal and was a superbly skillful lead dog for his sled.
Royal Salute
On one occasion Dr Norman, while wearing his kilt, was in a small canoe(which he had become quite proficient at in his travels in Canada andAlaska) in the middle of the Firth of Clyde using a plum line (a knottedline with a weight a one end used by sailors to measures the depth ofsea) to measure depths for a chart he was making of that section of theClyde. The Royal Yacht of King George V(?) came up the Clyde and passedclose to Dr Norman, at which point he stood up in the canoe and salutedthe king with his paddle.
This got quite a bit of newspaper coverage and a day or two laterMargaret Maclaren (Granny Mac) was at a "rather smart" cocktail partytalking with a group of acquaintances and one asked if "anyone had heardabout that crazy man in a kilt, in a small canoe, in the middle of theClyde, standing to salute the king with his paddle." Granny Mac remarked"Yes, he is my husband."
Pearls
On one occasion Norman Maclaren went, with his wife (Granny Mac) into ajewelers shop in Glasgow to look at some pearls. The jeweler startedtalking about this wonderful article he had just read about pearls, andhe went on and on about great it was. Granny Mac said she noticed a funnysmile on Norman's face and when they left she asked him what that wasabout. He explained that he had written the article.
Family Reunion?
At one point while Norman Maclaren (Norrie) was in Alaska his brothersand sisters started to notice that no one had seen or heard from Norriefor a long time. So one of his brothers went off to look for him. At onepoint looking through the window of a local bar in some very remoteplace, he saw Norrie partying with the locals. Apparently Norries had"gone native", so without even entering the building the brother turnedround and returned to Scotland. He had the brief message passed aroundthe family that "Norrie is still alive." And that was all that was saidabout it.
Norman Maclaren recounted a different version of the story. He had seenhis brother approaching some way off, ridiculously over dressed, withhuge amounts of equipment and provisions, plus quite an assortment ofservants and guides. Seeing this incongruous group arriving, Norman hiduntil they had gone passed.
ROBERT MACLAREN & COMPANY LTD. (later Maclaren Controls) by Ian GarnetMaclaren 1962
Th every earliest predecessors of the firm Robert Maclaren & Company area bit obscure but they appear to be centered around the Falkirk areawhere the original Maclarens were connected with Iron Foundry, and at thesame time in the early 1800 Robert Maclaren inherited a firm of IronFounders from his uncle, a Mr Liddel. However there seems to have been abit of dirty work over the inheritance as Robert Maclaren was very youngat the time, and eventually he brought an action against the Executors orTrustees of Mr Liddel from whom he won a substantial sum in damages. Withthis money he started a firm of his own.
The Robert Maclaren firm first appears on the registry as a business in1845, and was at that time a firm of Iron Founders in Washington Street,off Argyle Street. Rumour has it that they made the mortars for theCrimean War. The business expanded till in 1960 it moved to its presentsite, which in those days, consisted of the area bounded by West Street,Kilbernie Street and the railway siding on the other side of the Expressdeliveries, they opened out to Stromness Street and up to the railway,which in those days was a canal. The iron was brought by barge along thecanal to the works, and the main business was pipe making. The canal wasfilled in 1880.
Cast iron pipes of 1½" to 48" were made, as well as valves and watermeters. The old man Robert Maclaren, or "Bobbie the Rogue", died about1890. The firm continued to be known locally at the time as "Rabbie theRogue". In 1905 it turned into a limited company. At that time a verylarge export business was done with India, Rumania, Japan and Italy. In1912 a working agreement was arranged with Macfarlane Strang, and aninterchange of Directors a staff took place between the two companies.The payroll was then about 800.
When war broke out in 1914 all supplies of iron stopped and demand forpipes dried up. However the firm went over to munitions and got acontract for eight million fuse stampings, among other things. Later inthe war it teamed up with William Beardmore to make tank tracks.
After the war, in 1920, a subsidiary company was formed, called EglintonFounders Limited, half of which was owned by Beardmore and half by RobertMaclaren & Company. Robert Maclaren & Company sold them half of the landwhich roughly consisted of all the present works and buildings up to ourpresent fence.
Ingot molds were made here for casting steel ingots at Parkhead Forge,but eventually the early 1920s depression finished it and the company wasliquidated in about 1926.
In the meantime Robert Maclaren & Company turned over to making brassbars and small quantities of pipes, but the situation had rather changedas all the plant had been cleared out during the war to manufacturemunitions and the site was no longer a good one for heavy steelindustries because of the difficulty of transport. The cost ofre-equipping was too great, so all the remaining plant was sold and by1925 no further casting or work took place, but a merchant business onlyin Cast Iron pipes was carried on until 1931.
In 1931, the old company was wound up, and a new company with the samename was formed on this site as the present company.
However, we must go back a bit, for in 1919 Dr Norman Maclaren had beencontrolling temperature for medical research work at Glasgow University,and Colonel Robert Maclaren (his brother) caught a cold in a train, sothey got together and decided that the temperature in trains could, andshould, be controlled. In 1920 Mr. Richmond joined the firm toinvestigated temperature control generally. He started off in the messroom of the old foundry, which is still standing by the railway in theStandard Oil Company's grounds. That was in November 1920, and in January1921 Mr Eyles joined him. They started experimenting with mercury typethermostats run in conjunction with relays, and also spent some timegetting the place fitted out as a workshop, until the plant consisted ofone foot operated lathe, one mill and one drill were installed later andmotorised.
The first five years were almost entirely experimental, causing a lot ofheadaches until most of the original ideas were scrapped and also theoriginal idea of controlling the temperature in railway carriages had tobe abandoned due to the extreme dirtiness of the steam.
At that time almost all the output was to universities on the same typeof work as Dr Maclaren. The first recorded order on the books is for anincubator embedding oven and a hot plate for Baird & Tatlock on 1.5.23.Then there are one hundred and fifty orders for Glasgow, Belfast andother universities, and to Baird & Tatlock. Up to 24.1.25 all these werefor laboratory equipment, etc., then we got an order for one hundred gascooker controls from Falkirk Iron Company and thus became the pioneers ofgas oven thermostats.
Our 201st order was from Wild Barfied for a furnace thermostat up to 900degrees and was a slow break type. Our 202nd order , a month later, wasfrom George Nobbs. This was the original firm which went bankrupt in1934, owing us six hundred pounds, which we could ill afford in thosedays. However they did give their name to our instruments, because thethermostats for use in Boiler by Nobbs became Boiler Nobbs, or BN ,similarly FN and SN followed on from Furnace Nobbs and Surface Nobbs. Soon we plodded, and during 1926, apart from universities, etc., we got newcustomers such as Archibald Low, Carron, Wild-Barfield, Falkirk IronCompany, G.E.C. and by the end of 1926 we had two hundred and ninety sixorders in six years, most of them in the last six months of 1926.
In 1927 we made six hundred and twenty five thermostats, and newcustomers included Clyde Fuel, Benham, Haden, and Hotpoint and the ordershad changed to mainly thermostats and contactor switches, as opposed tolaboratory equipment. The turnover for that year was three thousand threehundred pounds, and the loss is not stated. In 1928 we had seven hundredand twenty three instruments with a turnover of two thousand, sevenhundred and twenty eight pounds. In 1929 we moved to the present officeblock and site as staff had increased to twelve. Five of these originalsare still here i.e., Mr. Eyles, Mr. Gallacher, Mr. King, Mr. H. Harrisonand Mr. H. Henderson. The layout was a M/C shop in the first floor werethe Pre-production department now is, and test and assembly in thepresent top flat of the offices with the store in the drawing office, theoffice consisted of a large room on the ground floor.
In 1929 we made one thousand six hundred and sixty nine instruments and aturnover of four thousand and seventy seven pounds. So It was thoughtthat the firm was on its feet and round the corner. Unfortunatelyhowever, we went round the corner slap into the great industrialdepression when no one had any money to buy such new fangled ideas asthermostats.
So in 1930 we made one thousand six hundred instruments and our turnoverwas down to three thousand two hundred and thirty seven pounds. In 1931only one thousand two hundred instruments and turnover was three thousandone hundred pounds.
In 1931 old Robert Maclaren & Company was wound up as already mention inthe earlier part, and a new firm was started with its own capital andsetup.
The new company , therefore had its own financial arrangements, andinstead of a yearly loss of two to three thousand pounds being absorbedby the parent company, these now appeared in all their glory on the newcompany's books.
However things were starting to look up, and the loss of 1932 was abouteight hundred pounds, with two thousand two hundred and forty eightinstruments made and a turnover of three thousand two hundred and ninetypounds.
1933 showed the start of a real revival in trade, and we started gettinggoing properly, with six thousand six hundred and one instruments madeand a modest profit of two hundred pounds. We also started on magneticsnap action about this time or a bit earlier, but disaster soon overtookus again the shape of a patent case with Rheostatic Company. This draggedon for the next three years, in 1935 during the fair holiday, the resultof the action was that we were forbidden to manufacture anymorethermostats with the magnetic snap action. This would have meantcompletely closing down the works. However, Mr. Richmond got to work andthought out a new non magnetic snap action, working away by himself inthe empty works he perfected it by himself and modified it to suit theexisting instruments so that when the works reopened, the mechanism wasready and patented and work proceeded right away, and the new actionproved better than the magnetic type.
During this time the output had gradually increased, and the top flat wasused for assembly, until in 1936 the turnover was about eighteen thousandpounds but the legal expenses of the litigation put the loss at aboutthree thousand pounds a year. In 1936 Colonel Robert Maclaren died.
In 1937 the patent case was settled out of court, after we had lost theappeal, and a large sum was paid out in damages. Also in 1937 Dr NormanMaclaren died.
In 1938 we started to show a slight profit and thought about expanding,so that in 1939 we put up what was supposed to be a temporary M/C shopand moved the test into the first flat, and the dispatch into what hadbeen the store. We also did up the offices a bit.
The war of course started and seventeen members of the firm were calledup and in 1940 girls were engaged for the first time.
During the war we just jogged along. As we had no profits to show for thepreceding three years, Excess Profits Tax took all the profits we made,until in 1945 the real rush started and expansion was necessary.
1945 was momentous, in that we paid our first dividend, which took aboutfour hundred pounds, just twenty five years after the start of thebusiness. In the middle of 1946 we moved the assembly and test into thenew extension beside the machine shop, and made new offices and a drawingroom on the first floor. These new offices were ready in 1947. Also MrBourne retired in that year after fourty five years with the firm. Mr.Warden joined us in 1950.
For the next few years we suffered the ups and downs of purchase tax andcredit restrictions, but we gradually re-equipped the M/C shop and thelast belt driven machine was disposed of in 1954.
In 1952 we started a separate Research and Development (R & D) in one ofthe offices under Mr. Adam. This moved in 1954 to the top flat, and in1954 we took on R & D for Ferranti.
In 1956 we started building the new assembly shop and dispatch, and gotinto this in August 1956. Then followed a nine month period ofreorganizing the shop generally with an enlarged test setup, newlighting, new service department, new layout for sub-assembly andincreased tool room. So that all production was on one floor and apre-production unit in the middle flat.
1958 was the next most important date in our history, in that a decisionwas made, then, to employ the Personnel Administration in an assignmentto improve methods and institute a direct incentive scheme. This startedat the end of 1958 and fortunately coincided with the increase in demandfor our products, so that in the next two years we increased ourproduction very considerably and felt the benefit of the re-organizationin the terms of increased profits.
1960 and 61 were periods of consolidation, and in 1961 and 62,particularly, showed an increased activity in new designs and thedecision to make our own capillary systems, which entailed building asmall addition to the works and installing suitable machinery for this.
Ian Garnet Maclaren 1962
|
1880 - 1937 (57 years)
[2]