Speaker Roger Bowers

Roger said that he was born on Amberley Street in Bradford Moor and one of his neighbours was Roy Tate. He said that if you were posh in this area, you had an inside toilet. Despite this several people living in street achieved high status in industry and politics. His father was a tool maker which is the one and only thing that he has in common with Keir Stamer.

He went to Hanson Primary School and then to Bradford Grammar School (BGS) on a partial scholarship. He felt that at that time if you didn’t get to Oxford or Cambridge, you felt you were a failure. On that criteria Roger failed and got a BSC Eng. from Leeds University and then an MBA equivalent sponsored by Michelin Tyres at Bradford Business School.

Following his education and Graduate Apprenticeship at Michelin, he went to Molins the cigarette machine manufacturing company in London to enjoy the swinging 60’s. He enjoyed this time but was unhappy at Molins.  On a visit home his Uncle Eric showed him the new 3-point micrometer he had invented for measuring the internal bore of tubes to a very high degree of accuracy.  Eric took out a patent believing it was original and the first in the world, but Roger has since found one that had been made 40 years earlier at the Royal Woolwich Arsenal for measuring the internal bore of gun barrels in WW1. 

Eric was not interested in taking the invention forward. Roger was impressed by the instrument and its possible potential.  He handed in his notice at Molins, bought out his interest from the family firm and with this new product set up his own company on Harris Street in Bradford with 3 or 4 staff. The company grew to about 200 people and moved to Thornbury. It marketed measuring tools for the mechanical engineering industry and exported them worldwide. It won the Queens Award for Export in 1989. He managed to expand the company during the Thatcher years investing in a lot of modern computerised machine tools from Japan.

One of these micrometers was used by Boeing in the United States for measuring rivet holes. Another batch of tools that he couldn’t talk about at the time, as it was classified, was a contract he won for instruments for the Apollo moon shot. His customers included Rolls Royce, British Aerospace and other defence contractors. He received a contract at an exhibition from a Professor at the University of Warsaw, but this was stopped by Government officials as it was for measuring guns made in Iraq.

Being in the defence industry he was monitored a lot by the security services in countries like Russia and China and also had to have 2 passports to overcome the problem of some countries not letting you in if you had stamps in your passport from one of their perceived enemies.

He sold the company at the age of 57 to U.S. Industries Inc as he felt that he had grown the company as much as he was able. After that he had three other jobs; the Chairman of the BGS Appeal for new buildings and bursaries; High Sheriff of West Yorkshire; and Deputy Lieutenant of West Yorkshire. One key memory from this was sitting next to Prince Charles, as he was then, at a business meeting.