Finding our Bearings... !

Fully trained and ready for adventure we attempt our first real journey back in time.

Focus your minds and turn your dials to the year 1898 - 113 years ago! are you ready to go? ok lets travel back in time, way back 

past your arrival in the world (if you're year 4 or 5 that is!), past the first ever text message being sent on a mobile phone (1992), past the invention of the post it note (1974)
, past england winning the world cup (1966), past the first skateboard to appear (1958)
past the second world war, (1939-45), past the invention of bubble gum (1928)
past the first world war, (1914-1918), past the first helicopter flight (1907)
, past the invention of the vacuum cleaner (1901).....

OK, slow down time travellers, we’ve arrived in 1898, turn off your engines, take your goggles off and park up your time machines.... !

So here we are in Chelmsford in 1898 where two cousins, Geoffrey and Charles Barrett, had set up a ball bearing factory in New Street near the town. But their bearings were tear drop shape and they couldn't no matter how hard they tried get their bearings to be round. So they persuaded an American chap, Ernst Gustav Hoffman (think he was Swiss American actually!) who had invented a machine that made perfect little silver balls, to join them and there you have it The Hoffmann Manufacturing Company Ltd. The country's very first ball bearing making factory!

By 1901 the company had perfected its mirror finished steel balls to such a level of accuracy they had earned world-wide-fame. From bearings for bicycles to motorcycles and then aeroplanes during the First World War, Hoffman bearings were everywhere. The company became so huge at its peak it had over 7,000 people working there!

And now, could we survive without ball bearings? well we have them in roller skates, skateboards, bicycle wheels, cars, trains, vacuum cleaners, typewriters, motorbikes, fishing rods, computer hard drives.......

"Wow! It's amazing what a little silver ball can do!"

Surrounded by all this new information, a table of clay, some watercolours and a whole bunch of wonderful sticky glueing materials, we set about designing our very own ball bearings!