From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Letter concerning advancements in American gearbox technology, particularly the 'Synchro-mesh' system.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 156\4\ scan0032 | |
| Date | 7th February 1929 | |
| February Seventh, 1929. Mr. A.F. Sidgreaves, Messrs. Rolls-Royce, Ltd., 14 Conduit Street, London, England. Dear Mr. Sidgreaves:- Subject: Gear Boxes There have been real rapid strides made in American automobile design and manufacture the past year or more with regard to improving the silence. One of the worst features on many American cars, notably the Packard, Cadillac and Chrysler, has been noisy transmissions. Last year Cadillac and LaSalle adopted the "Synchro-mesh" shift, which provides the easiest and most silent form of changing gears I have yet found. Through widespread advertising, aggregating many millions of dollars, in newspapers, magazines, trade journals and all sorts of periodicals, it is simply astonishing how educational processes quickly establish new features. Educational processes are admittedly very slow and require a generation or two to get far, but the universal appeal of the automobile coupled with the advertising media as above described, it is a fact that the American public generally become informed very quickly. So that a feature which is brought out as a new improvement soon becomes an insistent demand and the manufacturer who does not meet it has terrific sales resistance and his sales volume fades away. For example, front wheel brakes, which England and the Continent had developed years ago. In America just a couple of years ago the Duesenberg Motor Car Company spent large sums of money announcing the adoption of the front wheel brake and | ||