Rolls-Royce: The Growth of a Firm, 1978, 1978

Document Type: Book (Historical Study).

Purpose: Informational.

Authority: Author Expertise.

Series: This is the first of three books in the history.

Scope: Historical study of the Rolls-Royce company, written by Ian Lloyd, an independent historian.

From the dust jacket: "The name Rolls-Royce has stood for the best part of the twentieth century in the vanguard of British industrial and technological achievement. Its association with such outstanding events as the first West-East crossing of the Atlantic by Alcock and Brown, the Schneider Trophy competitions for the world's air speed record, the Battle of Britain in which the Merlin powered the Hurricanes and Spitfires flown by the 'few', and the successful postwar development of the gas-turbine is probably less well known than the car which remains its most famous product."

Contents (from the dust jacket): "The story of the car and of many of the Company's great technical achievements has often been told. In this book, for the first time, Ian Lloyd has revealed the fascinating interplay between the men, the ideas, the markets, the competitors and the Governments which make up the environment in which a great national institution such as Rolls-Royce is formed, develops and matures.

Starting with the fateful meeting which Henry Edmunds contrived between Rolls, Johnson and Royce in 1903, the evolution of industrial success, the grand strategy and day-to-day tactics of survival in one of the world's most competitive industrial environments unfolds in a compelling and absorbing narrative which ranges widely over the problems whose solution was a precondition of the successful growth of the firm.

For the first time the complete records of Rolls-Royce were made available to an independent historian. So confidential was much of this material that publication has been delayed for many years. Both British and United States Government archives have added to the fascinating harvest of fact and observation contained in this book, which takes the story to the end of the First World War.":