1981: Francis David Penny

Francis David Penny (1918-2005)

96th President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers

Penny was born in 1918 in Worcestershire, England the son of an engineering craftsman.

He was educated at Bromsgrove School and in 1934 began an apprenticeship with Cadbury Bros at Bourneville. He gained experience in the workshops and attended Birmingham Central Technical College. In 1938 he was awarded the Cadbury scholarship to study for a degree in engineering at University College, London for which he achieved first class honours.

At the start of the Second World War he joined the Armament Design Department at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich as a junior draughtsman. He remained with the department for fourteen years working on fuse design. He progressed though the department becoming Principal Scientific Officer responsible for the design of all non-proximity fuses for shells, mortars and land mines.
In 1954 Penny was appointed Chief Development Officer at the Fuel Research Station of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at Greenwich. He was involved in the formation of a new research establishment in Stevenage, the Warren Spring Laboratory. He developed the establishment’s research programme.

Penny’s experience led to a position with the National Engineering Laboratory and he was tasked with promoting the application of research results in industry. He worked towards ensuring that the Fielden Committee’s recommendations were implemented and chaired a working party formed to create the Computer Aided Design Committee of the Ministry of Technology. This work resulted in the establishment of the Computer Aided Design Centre in Cambridge which promoted CAD and computer aided manufacture in the 1960s.

In 1969 Penny moved into industry and joined Yarrow and Co as Director, and as Managing Director of its consulting engineering subsidiary Y-ARD. The firm was involved in the design of machinery for the Royal Navy’s Type 42 destroyer, Type 22 frigate, the Invincible class of cruisers, and nuclear submarines. In 1979 he was promoted to the role of Managing Director and retired in 1983.

Penny became a Fellow of the IMechE in 1960 and was elected President in 1981. He chaired the Professional Affairs and Qualifications Boards and was the IMechE’s first representative on the Watt Committee on Energy. He was also elected to the Fellowship of Engineering in 1980 and was a Fellow of University College London and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1991 he became the President of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers.

He died in 2005.

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