A Valentine's Photo-Brown Series postcard that was posted in Guildford on Tuesday the 24th. June 1924 to:
Miss F. Vowles, 80a, Atherton Road, Earlsfield.
The pencilled message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Flo, Thought you would like a card. We have had a very nice time here and some very nice walks. We had this walk one morning. We saw what is on the picture and it was grand. The weather has been lovely. We are coming home at the end of the week. With love from Emma."
Valentine’s Co. Ltd. (Valentine & Sons)
Valentine & Sons were a major postcard publisher of Dundee and London. The Valentine Company, a lithographic printing firm, was founded in 1825 in Dundee, Scotland by John Valentine.
His son James became an early pioneer of photography, and by the 1860’s his work was being reproduced by the Valentine Company as prints and stereo-views.
After James’ death in 1879, his two sons, George Dobson and William Dobson took over the Company, but in 1884 George moved to New Zealand where he became a landscape photographer.
In 1880 Valentine began producing Christmas cards, and by 1896 they began printing postcards. Up until 1882 they had only published views of Scotland, but they began expanding into other tourist markets.
Other offices opened in Jamaica, Madeira, Norway, Tangier, Canada, and New York. They produced a great range of view-cards that were mostly printed in Scotland in tinted halftone lithography or issued as real photo cards.
Valentine's Photo-Brown cards were printed in duotone using two halftone screens. They have the look of toned real photos.
In addition they produced a vast array of other products that held photographic images. All interests outside of Great Britain were sold in 1923. By 1929 they had given up their photo portraiture work to concentrate solely on postcard production.
However they did not anticipate the public’s growing demand for colour cards, and by the 1950’s their business was suffering. In response they put most of their efforts into greetings cards.
They were purchased by John Waddington & Co. in 1963, which passed on to Hallmark Cards in 1980. Dundee operations closed in 1994.
The Engineer Gordon Lewis
So what else happened on the day that Emma posted the card to Flo?
Well, the 24th. June 1924 marked the birth in Cheltenham of Gordon Lewis.
Gordon Manns Lewis CBE was a British aeronautical engineer who made significant contributions to the arts and sciences of turbine engine design.
Gordon Lewis - The Early Years
Gordon was the son of a clerk on the Great Western Railway. He won a scholarship to Pembroke College, Oxford and graduated in Engineering Science in 1944.
The Career of Gordon Lewis
Gordon joined the Bristol Aeroplane Company in 1944 and was put to work on stress calculations of the Theseus engine.
In 1946 he was entrusted with the design of the Olympus engine, which performed flawlessly on its very first test bed run, largely as a result of the discipline that Gordon brought to its design. The Olympus was later developed to power the Avro Vulcan, TSR-2 and Concorde.
Gordon was given responsibility for compressor design generally, and among other projects worked on transonic compressors, this being well ahead of equivalent work in America.
He also examined the virtues of two-spool engines with contra-rotating spools, and hypersonic designs.
In 1956 he was asked to comment upon the proposal made by Michel Wibault for a Vertical takeoff fighter powered by an engine of Wibault's conception. Gordon simplified and lightened the design, incorporating axial compressors and pairs of rotatable nozzles for the cold and hot gas streams.
This was evolved into the BE53/2, later named the Pegasus. The master patents for this engine were in the names of Michel Wibault and Gordon Lewis.
The Pegasus powered, successively, the Hawker P.1127, Kestrel, Harrier and Harrier II. It remains in service with the US Marine Corps to this day.
Gordon Lewis spent some years as Managing Director of Turbo-Union, which developed the Turbo-Union RB199 engine for the Panavia Tornado.
His patented devices cover a forty-year span, and he remained active in many aspects of turbine engine work well into the 21st. century.
The Death of Gordon Lewis
Gordon died at the age of 86 in Bristol on the 4th. October 2010.
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