After life’s work he has something concrete to show…

SHAKING hands with mill engineers at the exclusive Rand Club… filming baboons from his car at Kruger Park, where they “roam over the bonnet and dogs”… these, and other delightful memories of a trip to South Africa, are among the memories Mr. F. B. Cornelius will take into retirement at the end of this month.

Perhaps he will recall too, when he leaves Stanton Ironworks Company after 54 years, how he designed the 1939-45 War, more than a million concrete railway line sleepers which were to take the place of 40,000 tons of iron or steel sleepers. And of the production of concrete rocket heads and ballistic torpedo heads.

NEW PLANT

His researches into pre-stressed concrete culminated in the construction of a complete new plant which later went into quantity-production basis.

From his wealth of experience, Mr. Cornelius four years ago addressed the annual Ilkeston Convention of Concrete Trade Manufacturers of America, held in Chicago, on “Pre-cast Concrete Manufacturing.”

In an engineering magazine hours as Mr. Cornelius been a work of strength. On the formation of the company’s Stanton Ambulance Division became the first superintendent, and was later made a Serving Brother of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

FORMER H.G.

In 1940 he formed a Stanton Home Guard (the county’s first), and, later, a radio appeal was made.

He has been chairman of Stanton Ironworks National Savings Committee since the lighting columns, and a few scheme was adopted there in 1939.

He is the president of Stanton-by-Dale British Legion, of which he was a founder-member. Mr. Cornelius will continue to reside at Hall Road, Stanton-by-Dale, and will act as consultant to his former employers.

A married man, he has a son, Jack, who is a chartered accountant in Johannesburg.

📚 Sources

• Type: newspaper
  Title: Derby Evening Telegraph
  Date: 1956-03-23
  Page: 20