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Sir Harry Samuel Bickerton Brindley KBE (1867–1920) was a British engineer, armaments businessman and manufacturer.
Brindley was born in September 1867 in Handsworth, near Birmingham.[1] His father, G. S. Brindley, was an engineer and mechanics instructor at the Imperial College of Engineering in Japan,[2] where the young Brindley was raised and educated.[3] He graduated from Tokyo University with an engineering degree in 1883.[4]
While living in Tokyo, he received a United States patent in 1902 for a hydraulic or other fluid controlling valve.[5]
In 1915, Brindley assumed management of the Ponders End Shell Works, devoted to WWI production.[6][7][8] After the war, Winston Churchill wrote that Brindley's work at Ponders end "proved of the highest value to the Ministry of Munitions, and he has succeeded in a remarkable degree in enlisting the enthusiasm of the workers in the manufacture of shells."[9]
Following the war, Brindley sought to share the methods of industrial efficiency that he had developed at Ponder's end.[10] In 1919 he was a co-initiator of the British Institute of Industrial Administration.[11][12]
After the war, Ponders End employees petitioned the Freemasons for a lodge to be named after Brindley.[7] The request was successful, after it was supported by Winston Churchill. Brindley was chosen to be the first Master.[9]
Brindley died on 28 March 1920.[1] Three days after his death, Brindley was posthumously gazetted as a Knight Commander of the British Empire.[13]
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