British engineering firm Renishaw has announced that Sir David McMurtry, the company’s Co-founder and Non-executive Director, has passed away aged 84.
An engineering pioneer who invented the 3D touch-trigger probe, McMurtry was responsible for over 200 Renishaw patents. After co-founding Renishaw in 1973, he guided the company’s diversification into automation, neurosurgery, and additive manufacturing. Now, the firm employs 2,600 people in its Gloucestershire headquarters, and a similar number at global facilities across 36 countries.
In an official statement, Renishaw paid tribute to Sir David, describing him as a “truly visionary” figure whose “lateral thinking and capacity to deal with scientific concepts from multiple disciplines was truly legendary.”
The company added: “Sir David will be greatly missed by so many, including the generations of Renishaw engineers who he inspired and mentored. The manufacturing industry has lost a great innovator and many at Renishaw have lost a father figure and a friend.”
Remembering Sir David McMurtry
McMurtry worked at Rolls-Royce for 17 years, where he was responsible for 47 patents, before founding Renishaw alongside fellow Rolls-Royce engineer John Deer. Sir David launched Renishaw to commercialize his 3D touch-trigger probe, originally designed to solve measurement problems in Concorde supersonic aircraft engines.
Spearheaded by McMurtry, Renishaw led the development of coordinate measuring machines, shopfloor metrology and process control. Virtually all machine shops now feature tool setting technology and inspection probes to automate setting and measurement tasks. However, Renishaw called McMurtry’s ideas for such applications “truly revolutionary” in the 1970s.
McMurtry’s broad influence has been recognized with numerous awards worldwide. This includes the 7th ND Marketing Award in 1990, when McMurtry became the first non-Japanese winner to be recognized as an outstanding executive in the metal forming industry. Additionally, In 2008 he became the first non-US citizen to be honored as a ‘Master of Manufacturing’ by the official magazine of the US Society of Manufacturing Engineers.
Sir David was awarded the CBE in 1994 and received his knighthood in 2001 “for services to Design and Innovation.” Later in life, he received the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the economy of the Bristol city region. The same year, McMurtry became the first head of an engineering business to be honored with The Telegraph award for a Decade of Business Achievement.
Additional awards include The Institute of Physics’ 2012 Swan Medal and the inaugural MWP Lifetime Achievement Award for his significant contribution to UK manufacturing. In 2019, McMurtry received the prestigious James Watt International Gold Medal from The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) for his contribution to mechanical engineering.
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Featured image shows Sir David McMurtry. Photo via Renishaw.
