Frederick Lanchester was an eclectic inventor and theorist, who is best remembered for introducing the first motorcar in Britain, and he started a line of fine automobiles (which ultimately went under, demonstrating Lanchester’s lack of business sense, though he continued to contribute his technical knowledge as a consultant at Daimler). He may have had a deeper influence on military strategy, though, as he contributed theories on aerial combat as well as on ground deployment of forces. Although his theory offered a seemingly self-evident equation between the numerical force of a side and its ability to defeat the opponent, his ideas exerted a profound influence, not only on military situations, but also on corporate structure and management practices.
Frederick William Lanchester was born on October 23, 1868, in London, England. He was privately educated at the Hartley Institution in Southampton, after which he won a national scholarship to the Royal College of Science. He also studied at Imperial College in London.
He commenced his work career in Birmingham, working as an assistant manager and then as a manager at Messrs. T. B. Baker of Saltey, and, in 1889, he joined the Forward Gas Engine Company. After four years there, he established his own workshop, where he built his first experimental motorcar in 1894. Over the next half-decade, he continued to experiment and innovate new features for his gas engine and for his automobiles, such as rack-and-pinion steering, fuel injection, and power steering—he even patented disk brakes in 1901.
In 1896, Lanchester introduced Britain’s first motorcar, which featured a single-cylinder five-horsepower engine and a chain drive. His second car completed a thousand-mile tour in 1900. The year before, he had founded Lanch-ester Engine Company, acting as manager for its first five years. During that time period, the company produced 350 cars (all of which he constructed with interchangeable parts) and then met with financial straits. He stepped down to a designer and technical adviser position for the next decade, but the company ultimately went bankrupt. He continued his involvement in the automobile industry as a consultant for Daimler from 1909 through 1920.
Lanchester next turned his interest to the theory and practice of crewed flight. He was one of the first theorists to understand that aircraft offered significant strategic advantages in military campaigns. In 1908, just prior to the outbreak of World War I, he published his ideas in the text Aerial Flight, and in 1909, Prime Minister Asquith invited him to join the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (which he continued to serve through 1920). In 1911, he code-signed an experimental aircraft that crashed on its trial flight. However, despite this failure of his practical application on aeronautics, his air combat theories were proven correct when airplanes and aerial combat figured significantly in the outcome of the war.
Lanchester also developed a dynamical model of armed conflict, taking into consideration such factors as numerical strength, firepower, strategy, and attitude. Some military officials consider his theories brilliant, while other critics call his logic into question. For example, the battle of Iwo Jima in World War II demonstrates Lanchester’s equations perfectly; however, an analysis of 601 battles from 1600 on did not support Lanchester’s equations, though this may have more to do with a misapplication of his equations than an outright flaw in his methodology.
Interestingly, W. Edwards Deming and Japanese management theorists further developed Lanchester’s combat theories in the 1960s, resulting in the so-called New Lanchester Strategy. This theory predicted that when a business captures 80 percent of market share, it attracts competition from big companies in parallel markets and from small start-ups, thus cutting into its monopoly of market share. Along similar lines, Lanchester is considered the patron saint of operations research.
Lanchester also invented numerous other sundry innovations. For example, he patented a loudspeaker and other audio equipment. In 1917, he patented the pneumatic roof, which came into use in World War II. In 1925, he founded Lanchester’s Laboratories, to formalize his penchant for research and development consulting. He also continued to consult on the side, serving as a consulting engineer to the Bread-more diesel department from 1928 through 1930. Lanchester died on March 8, 1946.
