Driven engineer knew he had Rolls to play

One half of that name, Henry Royce, born 150 years ago today, started out as an electrical engineer in England. A business downturn and competition from foreign imports made him look to cars as another way to make a living.

He turned to his love of the new-fangled automobile and motoring history was created. He was born Frederick Henry Royce on March 27, 1863, at Alwalton, Huntingdonshire, the youngest of James and Mary Royce's five children. James ran a flour mill but when that failed the family moved to London.

James died in 1872 and Henry sold papers and delivered telegraph messages to help support his family. With only one year of formal schooling, in 1878 an aunt paid to secure him an apprenticeship with the Great Northern Railway company.

Money to pay for his apprenticeship ran out after three years, so he took a job at a tool and dye company in Leeds. In 1882 he went to work for the Electric Light & Power Company in London, becoming chief engineer in 1884 and installing the first electric street lights in Liverpool, England.

The confident 21-year-old engineer then pooled his money with a colleague, Ernest Claremont, forming FH Royce and Company, making electrical fittings for homes. The business thrived and by the 1890s they were also making electric dynamos, motors and cranes.

With a bit of wealth behind him, in 1893 Royce married Minnie Punt, but they would divorce without having children in 1912. This may have been because he had also found his true love, starting his affair with automobiles in the 1890s.

He bought several cars and liked to tinker with them, making improvements. When the Boer War and cheaper electric motor imports from the US and Germany started to have an impact on his business, he began to think seriously about making his own cars.

In about 1902 he bought a second hand, two-cylinder, 10hp Decauville. He liked the car, but found it unreliable and so decided to build his own car based on the Decauville. By 1904 Royce had built three cars he called Royces. He gave one to Claremont and sold another to fellow motoring enthusiast Henry Edmunds.

Edmunds was a member of the Automobile Club and, impressed by the car, introduced Royce to Charles Rolls. Born in 1877, Rolls was a young racing driver and owner of the car dealership CS Rolls. He had been selling foreign cars but was looking for a reliable English vehicle.

Rolls took possession of the third Royce car, liked what he saw and agreed to become the sole agent for Royce Ltd automobiles. Royce produced a range of cars over the next few years that would be badged Rolls-Royce -- but it was only in 1906 that manufacturer and dealer merged to form Rolls-Royce.

In 1907 Rolls-Royce cemented its reputation as premium carmakers by producing what was then known as the 40/50hp model, an ultra-quiet new six-cylinder car.

The managing director of Rolls-Royce, Claude Johnson, ordered that one of the cars be painted with silver coachwork and have silver-plated fittings, to use it as a promotional vehicle.

This car, known as chassis No.60551, was nicknamed the "Silver Ghost", a name that became applied to all other 40/50hps. It handled everything thrown at it -- earning it the reputation of "the perfect car".

It soon became the car of choice for the wealthy, famous and powerful. Tsar Nicholas of Russia had customised Silver Ghosts, as did the Maharaja of Mysore, although Johnson couldn't seem to interest the British royal family in his cars.

Later both Rolls and Royce became aviation enthusiasts, the former piloting aircraft, the latter building aircraft engines. Rolls died in a plane crash in 1910 and Royce would turn the company over to the war effort in 1914.

After the war the company continued to make luxury cars, discontinuing the Silver Ghost in 1926 when the Phantom went into production. Royce died in 1933 by which time even the king of England owned a Rolls-Royce.