In 1916, at the height of WW1, he quit his senior position at the giant General Electric Co and arrived on these shores to take up a position at Walthamstow. In contemporary accounts he is variously described as Works Manager, Joint Manager & Chief Engineer. His initial brief was to introduce American methods of mass production to the enlarged assembly shop. A moving line was designed and installed in 1917, with the Commercial Motor of 14 March 1918 reporting that a total of 25 men and 20 women turned out an average of 19/20 chassis in their ten-hour shift. This equates to one every thirty minutes or one hundred and ten per week. By the end of hostilities a combined total of over nine thousand AEC and Daimler 3 ton ‘Y’ types had been built, the largest by a British manufacturer.
Away from Walthamstow Sam was soon to be seconded by the Government to manage affairs at the newly created Central Repair Depot, otherwise known as ‘The Slough Dump.’ We need to refer back to 1917 to discover the history of
