ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the allegations by a general survey of the industry, and by focusing upon the company that Aldcroft symbolises as the most progressive firm, Alfred Herbert. Machine tools were central to the re-equipment and re-conversion of British industry to peace production. In 1922, Frank A. Scott predicted that both makers and users would have to accept that innovation and enterprise would 'be the ruling force' determining business success in the highly competitive post-war world. British makers were alive to this technological challenge at the Olympia Machine Tool Exhibition of 1920, organised by the Machine Tool Trade Association, yet complaints of technological conservatism abounded. In 1919, Sir Hallewell Rogers inferred that the war did have some positive impact on technological change. Factoring too, showed the continuing importance of imports, especially of American origin, to British engineering, and foreign competition was to hit hard as Britain's machine makers fell into the trough of depression in the 1920s.
