Biography

William Foster & Co Ltd was an agricultural machinery company based in Lincolnshire.

The company emerged in 1846, when William Foster purchased a flour mill in Lincoln where he began to manufacture mill and threshing machinery. The company grew from strength to strength converting the mill into an iron foundry in 1856 and employing over one hundred people by 1871. By 1869 Fosters had expanded to the international market, opening up branches in Budapest and Romania, and in 1877 became known as William Foster and Co.

As well as threshing machines, William Fosters manufactured agricultural machinery, traction engines, steam tractors and Showmen’s road locomotives and in 1910 collaborated with Richard Hornsby and Sons to make the Foster-Hornsby Chain Track haulage engine.

During the First World War Fosters worked in the production and design of prototype tanks and received the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors in recognition of their war work. From that point the symbol of the tank became the company’s trade mark and was used on all machinery they built.

In 1927 Fosters acquired Gwynnes Limited, manufacturers of centrifugal pumps, which by then were in liquidation. Three years laterthey moved the production of pumps to Lincoln and renamed the business Foster Gwynnes.

Fosters built the last traction engine in 1942 and by 1960 William Fosters and Co., disappeared as they were taken over by W. H. Allen, Sons and Co, which became Amalgamated Power Engineering in 1968.

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