Do you know the identity of Ferranti transformer man?

The transformers

Archivists at Manchester’s Museum of Science & Industry (MOSI) want to find out more about the mystery worker who is in a series photographs taken by the former Hollinwood-based company.

He is pictured posing with a range of transformers built at the Crown Works factory, Hollinwood, between 1921 and 1927, probably to demonstrate scale of the equipment.
MOSI, which has the Ferranti company archives in its collections, is currently cataloguing photographs of transformers built at the site in the 1920s.

It wants to hear from anyone who knows the man and senior archivist Jan Hicks said: “He appears in a lot of the photographs and it would be good to be able to add his name to the catalogue record.

“We’re also curious to find out if he had a specific role at Ferranti, and why he was chosen to appear in the photographs.

“If you think you recognise him and the person you knew worked at Ferranti during the 1920s please do get in touch.”

Ferranti was one of the largest manufacturers of transformers from 1895 to 1979, exporting them around the world.

Its instrument division built transformers at Crown Works from 1895 and a separate transformer division was set up in 1921.

In 1922, the company won a contract to supply seven 4,000 kilowatt-ampères transformers — the largest that had been made in Britain — to the Mangaho power station in New Zealand.

Transformer production became a thriving part of the company’s business, boosted by the launch of the National Grid in 1926.

In 1925, Ferranti produced Britain’s first million-volt arc in the high-voltage testing area of the Crown Works. This led to orders for 1,000,000-volt testing transformers from the National Physics Laboratory and GEC amongst others.

MOSI recently acquired a decommissioned sub-station transformer originally built by Ferranti in the 1930s which had been in operation for almost 90 years.

Transformers continued to be built at the Crown Works until the late 1940s when the Avenue Works building was constructed. The Chronicle is now printed at the Avenue Works by Trinity Mirror Printing.

People can contact MOSI on 0161 606 0127.