Category:Percival Marshall

Percival Marshall (1870-1948) was arguably the single most important single figure in the world of British model engineering in the first half of the Twentieth Century, and made it his life's work to bring model engineering to as wide an audience as possible.

Percival Marshall & Co.

Marshall's name is obviously most strongly associated with Percival Marshall & Co., the publishing house that he started. PM&C produced a wide range of modelmaking and model engineering books and periodicals, publishing works by almost every author in the modelmaking community, and their advertising was in turn a source of income that helped to support other smaller modelmaking publications.

Model Engineer / The Model Engineer Exhibition

Marshall was also behind the yearly Model Engineer Exhibition, organised by Model Engineer magazine, which encouraged members of the public to come and see and be inspired by engineered models that they would never normally get the chance to see, except perhaps at places like the Science Museum in Kensington.

Background

Starting a series of engineering jobs and courses at the age of 14, Marshall had built up a range of experience by the time he was 19. After his last engineering job (working a lathe for a company in France), he took a job as subeditor of The Hardwareman (owned by his uncle, Horace Brooks Marshall), and after then becoming editor of The Photographic News, he had sufficient experience of engineering and editing/publishing to start The Model Engineer in 1898.

At this time, around 1898-1999, Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke was looking to start his own mailorder model engineering supplies company, and Percival Marshall helped W.J. to set up the network of British contacts that served as the basis of much of Bassett-Lowke Ltd.'s UK-based business model for the next fifty years.