Alexander Duckham

By the outbreak of World War I, he was an authority on technological problems relating to lubrication, and the company went public in about 1920, relocating from Millwall to Hammersmith.

By the time he died in 1945, Duckhams had assumed a dominant position for the supply of lubricants and corrosion inhibitors to the motor industry in Britain and other markets.

Upon leaving university in 1899, Alexander Duckham, who had worked briefly for Fleming's Oil Company,[3] was encouraged by engineer Sir Alfred Yarrow, who lived nearby (Yarrow occupied Woodlands House in Mycenae Road, Westcombe Park for some years from 1896, close to the Duckham family home in Dartmouth Grove, Blackheath) to specialise in the study of lubrication, and was introduced to engineering firms with lubrication problems.

[3] As well as being a successful businessman, Duckham was an early aviation pioneer and close friend of cross-channel aviator Louis Blériot – he paid for the stone memorial in Dover marking the place where Blériot landed in 1909 to complete the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air aircraft,[8][9][10][Note 1] and 25 years later hosted a dinner at London's Savoy Hotel marking the anniversary of the flight.

[11] The outbreak of World War I in 1914 heightened the focus on mechanical efficiency, and the Duckham company was already established as the highest authority on technological problems in matters of lubrication.