Here, Robin Longbottom examines how an engineer born in Keighley went on to play a crucial role in the design of battleships

BEHIND St Thomas’ Church at Sutton-in-Craven is a low, unassuming memorial to John Gordon Longbottom – who died aged 54 in 1924.

The inscription on it describes him as ‘Late Professor of Mechanics Royal Technical College Glasgow’.

Although he was born in Keighley in 1869 he belonged to a well-established Sutton family that had lived in King’s Court, off the High Street, for some three generations.

The family had been textile machine makers and mechanics since the end of the 18th century and therefore it is not surprising that John followed in his ancestors’ footsteps and went into engineering.

He was a pupil at the Keighley Trade and Grammar School.

When he left at the age of 14 he began an apprenticeship with Messrs F&J Butterfield, machine tool makers, at Midland Works in Keighley.

The company saw such promise in him that it sent him to study at Bradford Technical College, where he won a three-year scholarship to the Royal College of Science in London.

Whilst at the Royal College he was awarded a Whitworth Scholarship, which had been established by Sir Joseph Whitworth in 1868 to promote outstanding engineers and engineering. From the Royal College he went on to further study at London University College.

In 1896 he took the post of lecturer in mechanical engineering at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow and was appointed to a professorship a few years later.

He was a world-recognised authority on rotor dynamics and designed the testing apparatus used in the college’s laboratory.

His expertise was such that he spent several months in Canada advising on the rotors for the hydro-electric power scheme at the Niagara Hydro-electric Power Plant.

His son-in-law, Gordon Rix, asserted many years later that “when the original shafts that drove the turbines cracked they sent for John. He recalculated the size they needed to be and recommended that the new ones should be reduced in thickness in order to allow for more torque, or elasticity, in the metal.”

John was also a member of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland and according to family tradition did the calculations for the thickness of the armour plating that was used on HMS Dreadnought and for the later battleships of the same ‘class’.

Although the warships were built in Portsmouth naval dockyards, the armour plating was made by William Beardmore & Company of Dalmuir on Clydeside, near Glasgow – and therefore it is highly likely that John was consulted by the company. The plating was eleven inches thick at the waterline and gradually reduced to eight inches on the upper part of the hull.

The Dreadnought was a state-of-the-art warship and all subsequent naval ships conformed to her design. The launching in 1906 started an arms race between Britain and Germany which culminated in the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

Amongst the many studies that he did was one on the effect of high temperatures in metals and in metal fatigue and in 1919 he produced a paper on the stresses and strains on the rims and arms of fly wheels on steam engines. His study was instrumental in improving the safety of steam engines, although they would be gradually phased out within a generation and replaced by electric motors.

He and his family returned to the house in King’s Court in Sutton during holidays and particularly at Christmas.

The Longbottom family sold the property in 1958.