{"id":1426,"date":"2025-02-01T11:31:21","date_gmt":"2025-02-01T11:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/?p=1426"},"modified":"2026-07-16T11:32:35","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T11:32:35","slug":"1966-and-all-that-stanleys-last-catalogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/2025\/02\/01\/1966-and-all-that-stanleys-last-catalogue\/","title":{"rendered":"1966 and All That – Stanley’s last catalogue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

1966 may have been a memorable year for England’s football team, but what about for the venerable English instrument maker WF Stanley? Having finally managed to track down a copy of the elusive 1966 Stanley catalogue mentioned in this\u00a02012 Yahoo groups post<\/a>\u00a0by Nick Mills, it may finally be possible to join the dots between the firm’s postwar resurgence and the eviscerated\u00a01976 price list<\/a>\u00a0issued in the immediate aftermath of their second takeover in a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up to this time, Stanley’s catalogues had been published in an attractive hard cover octavo format, with maroon cloth binding and gilt lettering. Smaller paper covered editions were also available, either with identical contents at a reduced scale, or as abridged versions with some product ranges omitted. These formats served the company well from the early years of the 20th century to the Second 33rd “A” Edition of 1960.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"WF<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

However, from this point the firm’s fortunes began to decline, leading to the 1965 acquisition by Clarke & Smith Industries. The new owners clearly felt that a different approach was needed, and this is reflected in the new catalogue issued within a year of the takeover (possibly 1965 or early 1966). Although larger in format, it is a flimsy spiral-bound affair with thin card covers. Gone is the proud gilt lettering, the heraldic shield emblazoned with surveying instruments, even any mention of London, England. Instead the cover simply reads “Stanley Instruments”, with the three words “Surveying Drafting Mathematical” running down a drab green gutter at the side. The two publications could not be more different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stanley<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Turning to the inside, the\u00a0first page\u00a0is headed “Introduction to new catalogue” and what follows might be described as putting on a brave face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Introduction<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Even in an era before the rise of such euphemistic business speak as “leveraging synergies” and so on, the underlying message is clear:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Since publication of our last catalogue, the STANLEY group of companies has become associated with Clarke & Smith Industries Ltd. – a group of some twenty manufacturing companies engaged in the related fields of electronics, optics and precision engineering. With the resources of this organisation supporting us we are embarked upon a major expansion programme involving the re-styling of many of our existing major products and the introduction of new instruments.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So far so good, but it soon becomes apparent that the New Stanley is employing the “bad news sandwich” stratagem. The next paragraph lands the killer blow with cold-blooded indifference:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

To make way for this programme it is necessary for us to discontinue manufacturing and trading in a wide range of relatively unsophisticated instruments and equipment, e.g. simple drawing instruments, set squares, French curves, drawing inks, pencils, erasers, stencils, water colours, printing machines and drawing, tracing and sectional papers. Some rationalisation has also taken place among our range of surveying, mathematical and drafting instruments and equipment, although these remain our principal lines of manufacture.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It goes on to add that their Holborn and Glasgow branches would continue to sell some of the discontinued items, to be listed in “special branch addenda” – presumably consisting mostly of old stock to be liquidated. Finally, mention is made of the new catalogue format, which would supposedly “enable customers to evaluate more readily the alternatives available to them, but as our designs are currently under review, we reserve the right to depart from catalogue specification and cannot undertake to be bound in detail either by the illustrations or printed descriptions.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately these disclaimers give the impression that the catalogue is not worth the paper it is printed on, the new spiral-bound format being simply a way to vary its contents at a moment’s notice. This is borne out by the\u00a0price list\u00a0stapled to the first page of my copy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stanley<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Headed “Prices as at 1st May 1966” (although probably printed in February, as the last page carries the printer’s code “J.&S. 2\/66”) it already contains swathes of items marked “DISCONTINUED”, from surveying chains and measuring tapes to straight edges for draughtsmen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the reader had been forewarned, drawing instruments are nowhere to be found, the only survivors being a modest range of boxwood and celluloid scale rules and two sizes of mahogany T-square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stanley<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Whether these remained by popular demand, or as a symbolic nod to the firm’s historic origins – Stanley’s first successful product was his redesigned T-square, while his scale dividing engine formed the bedrock of his early growth – is unclear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About half of the catalogue is given over to surveying instruments, with the remaining sections covering “Allbrit” drawing boards and drafting machines, planimeters and integrators, the Fuller calculator, and “Special purpose instruments” including the uninspiring “portable skid resistance tester” and the “Stanley-Wilkins astronomical reflector telescope” aimed at amateur astronomers and educational establishments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some indication of the brave new world promised by the introductory paragraph can be found in the\u00a0planimeter section, where the new “Stanley automatic reading planimeter” had been “modified to incorporate a photoelectric pulse generator” which sent output signals to an “Electronic Counting Unit” displaying the area “in decimal form on four numerical indicator tubes”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"New<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For the ultimate in convenience, the zero-setting and transfer switches of the counting unit could be operated by a “Herga Model 589 Miniature Micro-Switch Foot Pedal”, while a printed result of area measurements could be sent to an “Addo Printing Machine” or “Westrex Model 32 Automatic Page Printer and Tape Punch”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"New<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Obviously all of this came at a price. In contrast to the standard sliding bar Allbrit planimeter which retailed at \u00a327, the Automatic Reading Planimeter for use with a Westrex unit cost a whopping \u00a31158, while the Westrex itself would set you back a further \u00a3338. It must have come as a relief that the Herga Model 589 foot pedal was a mere \u00a32 14s 8d, bringing the total cost of an automatic planimeter system to \u00a31498 14s 8d, or one pound five shillings and fourpence change from one and a half grand. A photograph of “Stage 1 of the installation at Ordnance Survey, Southampton England” shows that at least some establishments could justify the investment. If you look closely, there is also something anachronistic about this scene – lying on the desk at front centre is a computing scale – possibly a reference to Stanley’s historic association<\/a> with the Ordnance Survey in developing the instrument (computing scales last appeared for sale in Stanley’s 1931 catalogue).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stanley's<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The sorry saga of what happened next is told in this PDF history of Clarke & Smith (The mighty pygmy in electronics<\/a><\/em> 1.65 MB). To summarise, within a decade Clarke & Smith were effectively taken over by the Sime Darby Group, a Singaporean company that quickly set about asset stripping its property. Following a corruption scandal and unsuccessful court case, things unravelled quickly. Stanley’s typewritten 1976 price list – or should that be catalogue<\/em>, because it does not seem to have been accompanied by any other printed document – reveals how far the company had fallen even since the pared-back 1966 offering. The Holborn branch is no more; gone too are the scale rules and T-squares. Even the much-vaunted automatic reading planimeters have fallen by the wayside, presumably too costly and quickly superseded by emerging computer systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 1966 catalogue is effectively the missing link between the previous 1960 “A” Edition and the 1976 typewritten list. Its accompanying May 1966 price list gives both “Old Catl. Ref.” and “New Catl. Ref.” for the products, the old numbers matching those of the “A” Edition catalogue. Meanwhile, the “Old Cat. No.” of the 1976 list corresponds to the new numbering in the 1966 catalogue, allowing us to trace individual products across all three publications. For example, a standard Abney Level is listed as A816 in 1960, G7 (old A816) in 1966 and G107\/A (old G7) in 1976. Over the same period, the price rose from \u00a310 10s in 1960 to \u00a317 in 1966 and finally \u00a340.30 in new decimal money by 1976, giving some idea of the inflationary pressures the company was operating under.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somehow WF Stanley plodded on for another 23 years before finally closing its doors in 1999. The contrast is even more stark when we consider that 23 years prior to 1976 the firm had celebrated its centenary with the lavish anniversary publication\u00a0A Century Of Scientific Instrument Making, 1853-1953<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stanley's<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The 1966 catalogue is perhaps the final instalment of a long series going back to the early 1860s, a sad reminder of the decline of an establishment that could justifiably claim to have once been\u00a0The Largest Manufacturers of Surveying and Drawing Instruments in the World<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1966 may have been a memorable year for England’s football team, but what about for the venerable English instrument maker WF Stanley? Having finally managed to track down a copy of the elusive 1966 Stanley catalogue mentioned in this\u00a02012 Yahoo groups post\u00a0by Nick Mills, it may finally be possible to join the dots between the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[345,39,9,36,126,236,215,4],"class_list":["post-1426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drawing-instruments","tag-345","tag-20th-century","tag-catalogues","tag-drawing","tag-england","tag-instrument","tag-planimeter","tag-stanley","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1426"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1720,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426\/revisions\/1720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}