Renishaw Announces Passing of Co-Founder, Sir David McMurtry

Renishaw has announced the passing of Sir David McMurtry, the company’s co-founder and non-executive director.

Sir David founded Renishaw in 1973 with John Deer, a fellow Rolls-Royce engineer, to commercialize the 3D touch-trigger probe for coordinate measuring machines. He had invented the probe the previous year to solve measurement problems faced in the manufacture of the Olympus engines that powered the Concorde supersonic aircraft. According to Renishaw, McMurtry was responsible for 47 patents at Rolls-Royce and went on to be named on over 200 patents for Renishaw innovations.

With Sir David at the helm, Renishaw revolutionized the development of coordinate measuring machines, shopfloor metrology and process control. Sir David also led the company’s diversification into other areas of metrology, manufacturing and automation, from encoders and calibration systems to neurosurgery and additive manufacturing. The company says his lateral thinking and capacity to deal with scientific concepts from multiple disciplines was truly legendary.

Sir David said that from the start, he and Deer set out to create a company that was different to most others — different in how it applied technology to real world problems, in how it invested for the long term, in how it manufactured rather than outsourced and in how it treated customers and local communities as partners.

Despite everything that he had achieved, Sir David was a reserved man who avoided publicity, and who was more comfortable sharing his insights with young engineers than making public speeches. His Knighthood was awarded “for services to Design and Innovation” and he was appointed a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) in 1989. He was also a Fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, a Fellow of the American Society of Manufacturing Engineers, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Royal Society. That said, some of his most noteworthy awards came from outside the U.K., including the 7^th ND Marketing Award in 1990, where Sir David was the first non-Japanese winner of this prestigious award given to outstanding executives in the metal forming industry. In 2008, the official magazine of the U.S. Society of Manufacturing Engineers also honored him as a ‘Master of Manufacturing’, the first time that this recognition had been given to a non-US citizen.

In 2013 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the economy of the Bristol city region and at the National Business Awards he was honored with The Telegraph award for a Decade of Business Achievement, the first head of an engineering business to be granted this award. The Institute of Physics jointly awarded its 2012 Swan Medal to Sir David and Deer for their role in founding Renishaw and leading it to become one of the world’s principal manufacturers of metrology equipment. In April 2014, during the MACH exhibition, Sir David was also awarded the inaugural MWP Lifetime Achievement Award, which honors an individual who has made a significant contribution to the U.K.’s manufacturing industry. In 2019, The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) awarded Sir David the James Watt International Gold Medal for his outstanding contribution to mechanical engineering.

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.