The international diffusion of the gas engine: Crossley Brothers and their partners in Spain, 1867-1935 / La difusión internacional del motor de gas: Crossley Brothers y sus socios en España, 1867-1935

Crossley Brothers, of Manchester, was probably the world’s main producer of gas engines before First World War. This was in part thanks to the agreements signed with Nikolaus Otto that gave them the exclusivity to make the atmospheric gas engine (1867) and the four-stroke gas engine (1876) in Britain, and worldwide trade rights, except for Germany. Crossley improved the original invention, so it earned a reputation of high quality and began to expand sales both in British and foreign markets. The strategy was to maintain the production in Manchester and export all over the world through local companies that actuated in their areas as trade agents and engine fitters. After the expiry of the British Otto patent in 1890, the company pushed sales abroad as the competition in internal market increased. At the end of the 19th century Crossley was “World Famous for Gas Engines” and had agents in 35 countries of the five continents. By 1914 it had sold more than 75.000 engines that were implemented in many different industries, although their main use was electricity generation.Julius G. Neville was a company born in Barcelona during the 1870s devoted to import British machinery into Spain. In 1884 it moved the headquarters to Liverpool and opened to new markets like Portugal and Italy. In any moment before 1892 it became the Agent of Crossley Brothers in Southern Europe and its intermediary for Latin America, although its main markets were Spain and Italy, where they had sold hundreds of engines before 1900. But around that date, Neville began to delay the payments and to increase its indebtedness to Crossley. This caused increasing difficulties between the two companies until the relations were broken off by Crossley around 1910. Probably as a response to these problems, in 1902 Neville decided to merge its Spanish branch with La Maquinista Naval –a Spanish company based in Mahón (Minorca)- to create a new company called the Sociedad Anglo-Española de Motores, that became the agent of Crossley in Spain. But the aforementioned problems persisted, so the British engine maker began to look for other possible Spanish partners in order to prepare the substitution. In fact, when the Sociedad Anglo-Española went bankrupt in 1911, this was not a problem for Crossley because some time ago it had created a new office in Madrid that was successfully running the business of the company. In 1917, this office was transformed into a local private company (Compañía Española de Motores Crossley) that, in addition to the Spanish business, began to push the company in Latin America in the 1920s.The present study, that still has many points that need clarification, makes some original contributions. It offers for the first time quantitative data about the production and business strategies of Crossley Brothers. It shows that the Spanish patent system was for this company more a weapon to protect its markets than a way to transfer technology, although part of the know how got into Spain through the local agents and the engines fitted in so many industrial companies and power stations, making a relevant contribution to the modernization of the Spanish economy. In short, the network of relationships between Otto, Crossley, Neville and the Anglo-Española shows the complexity and effects of the processes of international transfer of one of the key technologies of the Second Industrial Revolution.