1993: Dr Anthony Albert Denton

Dr Anthony Albert Denton (1937-2001)

108th President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers

Denton was born on 14 March 1937. His father was Walter Granville Denton, who was working at the time as a motor mechanic at the Woolley Colliery garage, and later became the Chief Automotive Engineer.

Anthony attended Woolley Colliery Church of England School, from where he won a scholarship to Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield. He then read mechanical sciences at Downing College, Cambridge, as a Savile Scholar. After graduating in 1958, he began a graduate apprenticeship with Quasi Arc Company as an apprenticeship engineer. Towards the end of his apprenticeship, he was involved in the development of automatic welding equipment for use in shipbuilding.

The company supported him in undertaking a doctorate at Imperial College, London. He was then offered a lectureship, which he held from 1963 to 1966. During this time he met with Captain David Noble, a Master Mariner, and marine consultant. He gave advice to many of Lloyd’s underwriters on deep-sea towages. With a wealth of seagoing experience, but few academic qualifications, he needed assistance with stability and stress calculations. Denton agreed to help with this in the evenings, after his academic work.

Noble was being asked to offer guidance on the towing of larger and less stable structures, most of them oil-drilling rigs. Together they worked on the towing and depositing of the first North Sea oil platform, ‘Mr. Cap’.

In 1966, Denton felt that he had to choose between academia and industry. He decided to work with W. D. Noble & Co. on a full time basis. In 1970 the company changed its name to Noble Denton and the firm Noble, Denton and Associates were incorporated in 1971. Denton was the technical director from 1971 to 1977, and from 1977 until his retirement twenty years later, he was chairman and chief executive. The firm was involved with most of the significant offshore developments of the twentieth century, and during his time as chairman and chief executive, the company expanded into global operations, advising underwriters on the risks of locating and moving large structures at sea. Such structures included steel and concrete oil platforms, lighthouses, tin dredgers, and even a floating nightclub, which had to be towed across the Pacific ocean during typhoon season.

The company also developed its own highly sophisticated weather forecasting operations covering the entire globe, finding existing weather forecasting systems to be inadequate. Television and film companies, as well as the offshore industry, now use this service.

Denton was President of the IMechE in 1993-1994. He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1983. He was appointed CBE in 1997.

He died in 2001.

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