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 from H. Matthes proposing a new headlight construction to improve night and fog driving.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 61a\3\ scan0124 | |
| Date | 11th October 1935 | |
| H.{Arthur M. Hanbury - Head Complaints} MATTHES. Blatt 2 des Briefes vom Oct. 11th 1935, Rolls Royce Limited, Derby. If you are seriously interested in this new construction I would be prepared to send my co-worker, Mr.Eder, civil engineer, if you so desire to you in order to have him explain to you the effect and all the possibilities of variation of this construction. He could also build one or several pairs of samples at your plant thereby taking into consideration all the specially required alterations you may want. I would at the same time grant you an option of sufficient duration to enable you to carry out all necessary tests. For this option I would expect payment approximately equalling the cost of Mr.Eder's trip and stay in England. I am very interested indeed to learn whether you see any way of furthering this matter, in my proposition. In concluding permit me to state the following. I am not the inventor-crank of the usual type nor do I boast about this construction which in my opinion was executed most carefully and thoroughly. I am on the contrary very self-critical and would not occasion you the trouble of looking into this matter were I not convinced to have solved a head light problem which has been strived after for a long time and which is a necessity to every motorist. I myself have time and again subjected the principle as well as the device to most critical trials and may therefore safely assume that this a thoroughly perfected construction and that its effect offers the ideal so long sought for. Head lights, very good ones and always better ones of great light-brightness abound but with my construction I hope to have reached that perfection which up to now did not exist and the lack of which made night-driving, driving in single file and driving through fog positively a horror. Without boasting I dare say that the comparatively small expen- | ||