I got into an argument the other day with my dad in relation to building and the things that hold up supports when building is going on.
I contended that the devices used to support structures while building, including support structures that the builders were standing on was scaffolding.
While my father contended that they were “arcoprops”.
I conceded defeat upon inspecting the devices which were holding up a structure. These had a screw arrangement and were single pieces used to support buildings and platforms to a desired height during the building process.
During a later ‘conversation’ / time for my dad to gloat that I was wrong he conceded that the “arcoprops” were related to scaffolding.
Advertising (1953, February 25). Construction (Sydney, NSW : 1938 - 1954), p. 7. Retrieved October 26, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article222895925
It got me thinking about what these “arcoprops” actually were and how they came to be a product.
As, unlike scaffolding, which has been around since we built anything above head height, these “arcoprops” are something that’s been designed and engineered. There’s a screw mechanism to them; they have been engineered and designed for purpose.
“Arcoprop” would seem to be a mis-pronunciation / mis-hearing of their name. The name for the original device is “Acrow prop”. “Arcoprop” could be a pronunciation difference, a long A at the start rather than a short A.
Wikipedia has a disappointingly short article on the Acrow prop. But at least it gave me somewhere to begin searching for a more detailed history, or more detailed information and a time frame to limit my search to regarding this device.
In 1935 Swiss-born William “Bill” de Vigier arrived in London, with £50 in his pocket, he set up a small workshop under Bow arches in the East End. There he made steel props which were adjustable for length by means of a robust screw thread. The name of the company comes from his solicitor who helped him set up said company a Mr A Crowe; de Vigier adapted his name on the grounds that it would be easy to pronounce and near the beginning of any alphabetical listing. <source:The Telegraph - Obituaries - William de Vigier>
That’s the summary history of Bill de Vigier from his obituary in the Telegraph and it’s this history that is cited on several sites and on a few different Wikipedia pages.
Reading into history provides a somewhat more interesting and detailed account.
William Alphonse Olivier de Vigier, born on the 22nd January 1912, best known as “Bill”, was schooled at Mrs Steiner in the Hermesbühl Schoolhouse in Solothurn, which he was expelled from the school for being an “extremely energetic child”. He was then sent to a Catholic reform school in Marseille. After that he attended a boarding school; La Châtaigneraie in the Canton of Vaud by Lake Geneva. After finishing school his father had wanted Bill to follow the family tradition and go into law, Bill was vehemently opposed to this and instead found a job at the engineering company Scintilla in Zuchwil near Solothurn. He completed a commercial apprenticeship with Scintilla in 1931. Scintilla is now part of Bosch, a part of Bosch which specialises in power tools for professional and domestic markets. In the late 1920s however it focused on magnetos for cars and planes.
Bill de Vigier then went to work at the Von-Roll factory in Klus-Balsthal. The Swiss company still exists to this day, focusing on electrical generation and power systems.
After this Bill went on to Madrid to work for Spanish company Telefónica. Which seems to be a telephone and communications company. Their history page is somewhat lacking on explanations of what they did when Bill was there.
Whatever he did there didn’t last long as he became ill and returned to Switzerland to again work for Scintilla where he was made responsible for the company’s correspondence in German, French, English and Spanish.
Now somewhere between 1932 and 1935 during the Great Depression which also affected Switzerland (and most of the world) there is something of a gap in de Vigier’s history. My guide and primary source is “100 years Bill de Vigier” which doesn’t fill in this gap very adequately.
This gap must hold something of interest, and more importantly would hopefully reveal where his inspiration came from for the Acrow prop.
His employment up to this point was with technical companies, those who produced magnetos or communications equipment. While it’s possible that he would have interacted with people in the construction field there doesn’t seem to be anything in any of the histories or information concerning Bill de Vigier or the Acrow prop that I’ve been able to find.
The only place I can fathom where he might have had some contact with construction materials (though why I’m not sure) is that in 1930 Bill served in the military, he was assigned to the Solothurn Fusiliers (Fusilier Company I/50). After training as a non-commissioned officer in Liestal, he was promoted to the rank of corporal but he was denied a more advanced career in the army because they said he lacked leadership qualities. In the future when he was running Acrow he would become the boss of over 10,000 employees.<source:100 years Bill de Vigier>
Reading up on fusiliers it seems that, while it’s the lowest rank in the army, in Switzerland it’s both the lowest rank, but also one where the soldiers do a lot of random (and menial) tasks. So it’s just about possible that Bill, while serving in the army he became inspired by building props and support structures and hung onto that idea until, after working in various industries set out to London to make his dreams a reality. (Note, I’ve found no sources for this, this is just my speculation based on available facts.)
In 1935 Switzerland (like many other parts of the world) was in the grip of recession. 24 year old Bill de Vigier left Switzerland for London figuring he’d have better chance for success there. He arrived in London with only 1,000 francs (around £50) with only an idea for an adjustable scaffold prop.
Realising that there was no one in London that could help him realise his idea he decided that he would have to manufacture it himself. He rented a small premises under the railway at Bow arches in East London.
Around this time Bill approached a well known local solicitor Arthur Crowe to establish the company but the cost for doing so was £32, far more than he could pay, given that the deposit in the arches was £15 (they were £30 per annum), and on the offices around the corner in Charterhouse square £4.
He persuaded Arthur Crow to give him six months credit on his fee and, partly out of gratitude and partly on the basis that it would always come near the top in any directory or listing, he used the solicitor’s name for his new company which became Acrow (Engineers) Ltd. The name was also used for his product the Acrow Prop. <source:Building Products Online>
Arthur Crowe’s name is spelt with and without the ‘E’ in various sources, I’ve kept it with an ‘E’ as that seems the most frequent spelling of it.
Bill is supposedly to have said of the company’s founding:
“The lawyer who organised the founding of my company was a certain Mr Arthur Crowe. That gave me the idea for the name of the company. What particularly appealed to me was the fact that the name began with an ‘A’. The advantage was that the name ‘Acrow’ would come first in any alphabetical list. Furthermore, the word ‘Acrow’ is easy to pronounce in every language and is easy to remember.” <source:100 Years Bill de Vigier>
While Bill was in London, after he’d set up the company, though before he’d begun to properly manufacture any of the Acrow props he ran into an old friend Switzerland Willi Landauer, later another friend joined them Albert Bauscher (whom everyone called George), and the three of them decided to invest £50 each in the new company. <source:100 Years Bill de Vigier>
At this point Bill had around £150 in working capital to begin his company, which in 2016 is equivalent to around £9,600. It’s still not a huge amount to begin a company with. But seems it was enough, Bill hired three workers who along with Bill himself working 14-15 hour days manufacturing the props. Bill spent his Sundays wandering around London looking for building sites where he might be able to find and convince new customers to get interested in his new Acrow props. <source:100 Years Bill de Vigiers>
For three months he was unable to find any builders that would be interested in using his props, until he came upon the firm Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons and Peter Lind & Company. Both companies saw the potential in Bill’s Acrow props and placed limited orders with the Acrow company.
By 1938, just three years after arriving in London with an idea Bill moved the Acrow company to a ‘proper’ factory in Slough. <source:Building Products Online>
By 1939 they had produced over 40,000 Acrow props and were producing 100,000 props a year. The history beyond this point becomes a little less ‘one man with an idea and a factory’ and something more of a company expanding across the world. However, even with these expansions, floats on the stock market (this happened in the UK in 1949), Bill maintained 51% of the shares in the companies. In 1956 he was honoured with Knight of the Swedish Royal Order of the North Star.
Expansion followed for the company throughout the period from the 1940s all the way to the 1980s, notably during the period 1968 to 1975 where the number of Acrow’s employees effectively doubled from 4,500 to 10,200. During this time Bill was also on the board of British Airways and amongst other achievements negotiated the first landing rights for British Airways to land in China in 1978.
Advertising (1954, October 27). Construction (Sydney, NSW : 1938 - 1954), p. 24. Retrieved October 25, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article224517942
By the 1980s, when Bill retired his concern was handing over the control of his organisation; he wanted to give the employees and directors a chance to take over through employee buyouts.
During this period some international versions of Acrow disappeared, Acrow Australia for example was bought out by Boral Australia.
Interestingly recently in 2010 Boral Formwork & Scaffolding changed its name, rebranding to Acrow Formwork and Scaffolding Pty Ltd (Acrow).
The original Acrow UK also faltered during the 1980s recession in construction and finance, and sometime between 1980 and 1984 Acrow Engineers (Formwork and Scaffolding) was acquired by Leada Ltd which then formed the company Leada Acrow Ltd, a division of the HAT Group (an accountancy firm begun in 1975).
Acrow continues to this day with it defined by British Standard BS 4074:1982 “Specification for metal props and struts”, which was replaced by British Standard BS EN 1065:1999 “Adjustable telescopic steel props. Product specifications, design and assessment by calculation and tests” and BS 4074:2000 “Specification for steel trench struts”.