Stuart Turner

Sidney Marmaduke Stuart Turner was an English engineer born in Shepherds Bush, London in 1869. Little is known about his childhood or adolescence although we do know that his family's ambitions for him did not include becoming an engineer. After a series of other jobs including an apprenticeship on the Clyde building marine engines, a period at sea and working as an engineer in Jersey, he gained employment in 1897 looking after the steam generating plant at Shiplake Court near Henley-on-Thames, England. In those days mains electricity was rare and therefore most large houses had their own electricity generating plants. It was while working at Shiplake that Turner designed his No.1 Model Steam Engine. He drew up the patterns which he then sent away to be cast. On their return he machined and assembled them and soon showed the finished model at a local exhibition. He then approached Percival Marshall the editor of Model Engineer magazine who wrote an article about the engine. This coverage brought an immediate response and orders for sets of castings flooded in, and a business was established in 1898.