Correspondence dated 17 June 1954

Summary

An item from the surviving correspondence of William John Sands.

Historical context

This item forms part of the surviving William John Sands correspondence and is dated 17 June 1954. It is preserved in the William John Sands Family Archive as evidence of Sands’s professional work and relationships. The accompanying transcript was produced by machine OCR and should be checked against the original scan before being treated as a definitive reading.

Catalogue description

Original correspondence scan imported from the Sands and Ferguson family archive. Source file: 19540617.pdf.

Machine transcript — unreviewed

[Page 1] MASSEY-HARREIS-FERGUSOR ” (ENGINEERING) LIMITED TELEPHONE: COVENTRY 5533 - FLETCHAMSTEAD HIGHWAY, COVENTRY - TELEGRAMS : “FARMING”. William J. Sands, Esq., Myrtlefield, 17th June, 195%. Hillsborough Old Road, Lisburn, Co. Antrim. Dear Willie, First of all may I say how glad I am that you and Mr. Ferguson are together again and co-operating on design work. I had no idea that Mr. Ferguson was going to see you during his last visit to Belfast but when he came back he told me and others, including Alec Patterson and Jimmy McNeice. Mr. Ferguson himself seemed to be very pleased that he had been able to see you - and indeed we all were. We hope that you will find it possible to come over to Coventry in the near uture. Mr. Ferguson is extremely busy at the moment as Mr. Duncan, the President of Massey-Harris-Ferguson Limited, with several other Canadians, is at present over in this country and he has asked me to reply to your letter dated 7th June. Mr. Ferguson had previously given us for study your Infinitely Variable Gear Patent Specification. We have made a technical study of this and find it ingenious and interesting and we can certainly say that we have not come across a similar combination of belts and epicyclics. The most interesting design feature seems to be the fact that this transmission first of all has a neutral opera- tional point which would eliminate the necessity for a clutch or the necessity for clutching in by tensioning the belt; sec- ondly, the transmission provides forward and reverse infinitely variable speeds; thirdly, the reduction ratios near the neutral point are very high indeed and would permit a very gradual speed increase from rest. We have been trying to assess the value of your designs if applied to our sizes of tractors and your views on this would be of great assistance to us. We are cautious and DiRECTORS. G 7. M.BEVAN J M CHAMBERS 1 $. DUNCAN. CMG HARRY G FERGUSON T V. KNOX LG REID A SENKOVWSKI 1 J WALLACE £ We. YOUNG [Page 2] (2) William J. Sands, Esq. 17th June, 1954. lack experience with belt drives to transmit large powers of the order of 30 and 60 h.p. and whereas we are hesitant to believe that it will be an excellent solution for tractors and motor cars as mentioned above, we feel that it is possible that it might have a very good application for self-propelled combines and similar types of machinery. At the present time Massey-Harris self-propelled combines are using infinitely variable V belt drives with a limited range together with a ed dai transmission, including a reverse gear and transmission clutch. We hope to have an opportunity in the very near future of discussing your designs with the top Design Engineer for Massey-Harris combines. I shall certainly write to you again after we have had this opportunity and let you know Mr. Carroll's views. We discussed all this with Mr. Ferguson when he visited Coventry yesterday and he asked me to tell you that he now has on his transport project - which deals with motor cars and the like - a very new transmission which is the very last word in perfection and had it not been for this fact he and his designers on this project might have been interested in your designs. TRANSMISSION OF TOMORROW With your letter to Mr. Ferguson you enclosed a page from the magazine "Motor Cycling" and marked a paragraph with this heading. We have known here for at least two years of this development work by the N.I.A.E. and had an opportunity of seeing the tractor being demonstrated during an open day at Wrest Park about two weeks ago. We are watching this develop- ment work very closely and will have an opportunity of seeing it in further tests as the design is developed. So far the N.I.A.E. has not yet tested this tractor for efficiency or per- formance, nor do they know how it will behave under actual field conditions. SOME EXPERIMENTS IN TRANSMISSIONS With reference to the page you attached to your letter to Mr. Ferguson under this heading, we would not like to [Page 3] (3) William J. Sands, Esq. 17th June, 1954. comment very much on your summary but it is quite likely that you will come to Coventry soon when we can have a full dis- cussion. With kind regards, Yours sincerely, pe tonto John M. Chambers. JMC/IMV .