Rolls-Royce Motor Cars PressClub · Article.
SIR HENRY ROYCE (1863 - 1933): DRIVEN BY PERFECTION
27.03.2023 Press Release
Sir Henry Royce’s uncompromising command, “Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take the best that exists and make it better” is one of the most famous quotations in automotive history. It is also a maxim that rings down the ages, and still inspires and informs the company that bears his name.
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Georgina Cox
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
This article in other PressClubs
- Rolls-Royce marks the 160th anniversary of the birth of co-founder Sir Henry Royce
- A look back at his remarkable life and work reveals a driven, even obsessive character and a relentless work ethic forged in childhood poverty and frequent adversity
- The quest for perfection extended to every aspect of Royce’s professional and personal life
- His famous maxim “Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take
the best that exists and make it better” still informs and inspires
the company’s activities today
“Sir Henry Royce bequeathed to the world an extraordinary legacy
of engineering innovation and achievement. He also left us, his
successors at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, an unequivocal instruction:
‘Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take the best that
exists and make it better’. Sir Henry himself lived out this maxim
in every aspect of his personal and professional life. Today, as we
mark the 160th anniversary of his birth, his challenge still informs
and inspires everything we do. It serves as a constant reminder that
perfection is a moving target: it is never ‘done’. There is always
something we can refine, adjust, rework, reinvent or innovate in our
pursuit of perfection; and that is what makes our life and work here
so exciting.”
Torsten Müller-Ötvös, Chief Executive Officer, Rolls-Royce
Motor Cars
Sir Henry Royce’s uncompromising command, “Strive for
perfection in everything you do. Take the best that exists and make it
better” is one of the most famous quotations in automotive history. It
is also a maxim that rings down the ages, and still inspires and
informs the company that bears his name.
As Rolls-Royce marks the 160th anniversary of Sir Henry’s birth,
we look back at his remarkable life and career, in search of the
origins of his most celebrated and oft-repeated exhortation. What
drove his own lifelong striving for perfection; and how did his
relentless, some might say obsessive, desire to improve and refine
manifest itself in both his work and domestic spheres?
A LOT TO IMPROVE ON
Royce’s early life was one of hardship, poverty and
disadvantage. The youngest of five children, he was born in 1863 into
a family in perilous financial circumstances. Matters worsened
considerably when his father, a miller, was finally declared bankrupt
and, under the law of the time, ended up in prison.
It was against this unpromising backdrop that Royce’s character
was formed. Yet he was determined to make a better life for himself,
and by the age of just 10 was working in London, first as a newspaper
seller and later as a telegram delivery boy.
Things appeared to be moving his way when in 1879, with
financial support from his aunt, he secured a coveted apprenticeship
at the Great Northern Railway (GNR) workshops in Peterborough.
Instantly and obviously in his element, his natural aptitude for
design and innate skill with tools and materials quickly become
apparent. One early indicator of his talent was a set of three
miniature wheelbarrows he made in brass; these pieces clearly
demonstrate the exemplary standard of workmanship and quest for
excellence he would maintain throughout his life.
VICISSITUDES
Royce’s drive for self-improvement came to an abrupt
halt after two years, when his aunt was unable to pay his annual
apprenticeship fee. Undaunted, Royce returned to London and, in 1881,
began work at the fledgling Electric Lighting & Power Generating
Company (EL&PG).
His decision to forsake traditional engineering for the emerging
field of electricity was essentially a pragmatic one. Electricity was
then so new it had no governing body or professional institutions, and
thus no examinations to pass or standards to attain. Unlike in
engineering, therefore, Royce’s lack of formal qualifications was no
barrier to his progress.
His fascination for the subject, already formidable work ethic
and commitment to study (he attended evening classes in English and
Mathematics after work) meant that in 1882, the EL&PG, by now
renamed the Maxim-Weston Electric Company, sent him to work for its
subsidiary in Lancashire as First (Chief) Electrician, responsible for
street and theatre lighting in the city of Liverpool. Yet again,
however, circumstances conspired against him: through gross
mismanagement in its acquisition of patents, the company abruptly went
into receivership and Royce, aged only 19, found himself unemployed
once more.
TAKING CHARGE
Although the parent company of his erstwhile employer
chose to salvage what it could rather than sell off the remaining
resources, Royce had had enough. Impelled by his innate drive, clear
appetite for (calculated) risk and the abundant self-assurance noted
by his contemporaries, he started up in business on his own.
In late 1884, he founded F H Royce & Co (he was christened
Frederick Henry) in Manchester. Initially producing small items such
as battery-powered door bells, the company progressed to making heavy
equipment such as overhead cranes and railway shunting capstans.
But while the business was thriving, Royce himself was not. By
1901, his years of overwork and a strained home life were taking a
severe toll on his health, which had probably been fundamentally
weakened by the privations of his childhood.
His doctor persuaded him to buy a De Dion quadricycle as a way
to escape the office and enjoy some fresh air; but before long,
Royce’s health collapsed. A major contributing factor was his growing
concern that the company was heading into financial problems;
something that would perhaps have had particular significance for him
given his father’s experiences.
The company owed its dwindling fortunes to an influx of cheap,
or at least cheaper, electrical machinery from Germany and the USA
that was able to undercut Royce’s prices. Ever the perfectionist,
Royce himself was not prepared to enter a race to the bottom or
compromise the quality of his products.
Complete rest was required, and he was eventually persuaded to
take a 10-week holiday to visit his wife’s family in South Africa. On
the long voyage home, he read ‘The Automobile – its construction and
management’. The book would change his life – and ultimately, the world.
MAKING THE BEST BETTER
On his return to England, Royce – now fully
revitalised both mentally and physically – immediately acquired his
first motor car, a 10 H.P. Decauville. Given the still-parlous state
of his company’s finances, this might have seemed a frivolous
squandering of precious funds; but in fact, this purchase was a shrewd
and calculated one that, in his mind, held the key to the company’s
future prosperity.
The story usually goes that this first car was so poorly made
and unreliable that Royce decided he could do better. In fact, his
holiday reading had already focused his mind on producing his own car
from scratch; he had already supplied a limited number of electric
motors for the ‘Pritchett and Gold’ electric car. So contrary to the
received wisdom, he chose the Decauville precisely because it was the
finest car available to him, in order to dismantle it and then, in his
most famous phrase, “take the best that exists and make it better”.
He began by building three two-cylinder 10 H.P. cars based on
the Decauville layout. That he was the only person who believed this
new direction could save the company is another sign of his tenacity
and self-belief. Just as importantly, his attention to detail in
design and manufacture, accompanied by a continuous review of
components after analysis, set the production template he would follow
until his death.
These first examples were followed by the three-cylinder 15
H.P., four-cylinder 20 H.P. and six-cylinder 30 H.P. – each of which
represented significant advances in automotive design. In 1906, two
years after the founding of Rolls-Royce, Managing Director Claude
Johnson persuaded Royce to adopt a ‘one model’ policy. In response,
Royce designed the 40/50 H.P. ‘Silver Ghost’, the car that rightly
earned the immortal soubriquet “the best car in the world”.
The Silver Ghost demonstrated Royce’s almost uncanny instinct
for using the right materials for components, long before scientific
analysis could provide reliable data. He also worked out that the
properties of fluids alter with speed, so designed the Silver Ghost’s
carburettor with three jets that came into play at different throttle
openings, thereby eliminating ‘flat spots’.
HOME AND AWAY
By 1906 it was obvious that Rolls-Royce’s Cooke
Street works in Manchester could no longer accommodate the company’s
rapidly expanding motor car production. Rolls-Royce acquired a site on
Nightingale Road in Derby, where Royce designed and oversaw the
building of a brand-new, purpose-built factory. He undertook this
enormous and technically complex task on top of his normal workload,
and demanded his customary exacting standards from all concerned, not
least himself.
Given the relentless volume and pace of his work, Royce’s second
serious health crisis in 1911 came as little surprise. Rest was again
prescribed, and during the summer and autumn, Johnson drove him on a
road trip that extended as far as Egypt. On the return journey, they
stopped in the south of France, where Royce took a strong liking for
the tiny hamlet of Le Canadel, near Nice. Ever the man of action,
Johnson bought a parcel of land and commissioned a new house for
Royce, plus a smaller villa for visiting draughtsmen and assistants.
Royce himself naturally took a keen interest in the building work,
basing himself in a nearby hotel.
His health, however, remained fragile. After a relapse which led
to emergency surgery in England, he returned to the now-finished house
to recuperate. For the rest of life, he (very sensibly) spent his
winters at Le Canadel and the summers in the south of England.
From 1917, his English residence was Elmstead, an 18th-Century
house in the village of West Wittering on the Sussex coast, just eight
miles from the present-day Home of Rolls-Royce at Goodwood. Elmstead
had some adjoining land, where Royce resumed his long-standing
interest in fruit farming. Inevitably, he brought his desire for
perfection to this activity, too, and he quickly became a leading
expert in many aspects of farming and horticulture.
His domestic life at Elmstead throws further light on his
perfectionist nature, which focused his attention on even the smallest
actions of others. For example, any aspiring cook would be employed
only if they boiled potatoes in the ‘right’ way – just as an
unfortunate labourer in the Cooke Street works was once admonished and
shown how to use a broom correctly.
A REMARKABLE LEGACY
Whether he was designing car components or aircraft
engines, Royce’s search for perfection never waned; yet even he
acknowledged that it was, in fact, unattainable. His mantra for his
drawing-office staff was ‘Rub out, alter, improve, refine’, and that
process of constant improvement and development led to some of his
greatest engineering achievements. Under his direction, the Buzzard
aero engine built in 1927 with an initial output of 825 H.P. was
transformed in just four years into the Schneider Trophy-winning ‘R’
engine that, in its final form, was capable of producing 2,783 H.P.
And his outline design for a V12 engine would appear almost unaltered
in the Phantom III of 1936, three years after his death. An
instinctive, intuitive engineer, he was a firm believer that if
something looked right, it probably was right. His extraordinary
ability to assess components by eye alone proved infallible time and
time again.
Royce’s tendency to overwork, often at the expense of his own
health, was a symptom of his quest for perfection, and a will to
achieve it forged in hardship and adversity. He was a highly driven –
some might say obsessive – man who overcame many setbacks and
misfortunes, and applied his meticulous engineer’s eye, inquisitive
mind and relentless work ethic to every aspect of his life. And such
is the power of his ethos and legend, they still inform and inspire
the company that bears his name 160 years after his birth.