It was with great sadness we learnt about the passing of Sir David McMurtry, Co-Founder of Renishaw, yesterday.
Please see a statement below from our Co-Founder and Commercial Director, Tony Brown, about this news:
“Sir David was a legendary figure in global manufacturing and instrumental in the success of MSP. At 84 years old when he died, he’d done a lot of living and I encourage you all to explore the life of this extraordinary man.
Without him, there would be no MSP or the metrology industry as we know it today. In 1972, while working at Rolls Royce, he invented the touch trigger probe that allowed the digital collection of part measurement data. Before that, everything was measured manually by people with gauges, micrometres and rulers. There was little accuracy and repeatability which resulted in poor fit and finish, especially in the aerospace and automotive industries.
From that first invention, his personal drive for innovation has turned Renishaw into a global engineering success, and the evidence of its success is everywhere - car engines that will run for hundreds of thousands of miles instead of a few tens of thousands; mobile devices with manufacturing tolerances of microns to achieve the reduced size we have grown used to. And every product in between.
From the moment I met him, he certainly changed my life for the better, as he has for many others. It has been an honour to work alongside him and Renishaw to create and develop products like UCCserver and Equator. Whenever I have been in the Renishaw canteen over the years, even recently, he would always come over to have his meal and talk about his latest projects.
He will be greatly missed by all of us.”
