Henry Royce
Completely different than his later partner, Charles Stuart Rolls he grows up. He comes from a poor family, the
youngest of in total 5 siblings. The father has to go to London for a more promising work as an expert for steam-powered mills and takes along him and his brother. There the just nine year old Henry experienced his father's
death by an incurable disease.
Returned to the mother, the difficulties are piling up to make ends meet. Henry must take every opportunity to earn money. He has a newspaper route, for example, perhaps even in the quarters where four or five years later,
Charles Rolls is born. In any case, the result from this unfortunate situation is a school attendance of just one year.
From the age of 14, his aunt performs an important role. She pays for him the education in a railway workshop. This is usual at that time. After all, the money of the aunt is enough for three years, then he become acquainted
with the real world of work with 14-hour days at a manufacturing for tools in Leeds. After a year, he manages the change in the field of the newly emerging electrical industry.
This is the result of advanced training, he has done in his limited spare time. He can thereby compensate the lack of education and he forms an awareness for perfectionism which will characterize all his later work. In his
hometown Peterborough, 130 km north of London, to him remains next to his new job even still time to visit an appropriate technical school.
At some point during the three years of his employment there in a responsible position he goes for the company to Liverpool, but then ends with the company also his employment. After all, he has meanwhile met
theelectrical engineer Ernest Claremont who has a little more cash than he. Both set up a company for important tools for the use of the electric, just starting to establish itself.
Manchester is the city of their choice. The new firm has been so successful that it is converted in the stock corporation Royce Ltd. after 5 years. Henry Royce married 1993 and his future seems assured. But then the cranes
and generators, built in a second factory, get increasing competition from countries like USA and Germany whose industrial revolution has begun some time later than in England.
To ensure the prosperity meanwhile attained, Henry Royce attends to the construction of motor vehicles from approximately the turn of the century. The acquired in France, De Dion Quadricycle and Decauville can not fulfill
his requirements. He only learns dealing with the vehicles and know their construction. However, the first signs of disease are visible at Royce already at this time. 10/12
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