Joseph Bamford He continued to design both boats and diesel engines. Bamford was awarded the honorary degree of a Doctor of Technology from both Loughborough University in 1989 and Keele University in 2000. Bamford died in a London clinic on 1 March 2001. At his death, JCB was the largest privately owned engineering company in Britain, employing 4,500 people and manufacturing 30,000 machines a year in 12 factories on three continents. It had revenues of £850m in 1999, earned from 140 countries. His portraits by Lucinda Douglas-Menzies and Leslie Smithers (whilst he was still the head of his JCB empire) are in
Joseph Bamford and standing engines, which were exported all over the world. The company eventually ceased trading in 1986. After attending Stonyhurst College, he joined the Alfred Herbert company in Coventry, then the UK's largest machine-tool manufacturer, and rose to represent the firm in Ghana. He returned home in 1938 to join the family firm, but in 1941 was called up by the RAF to serve in World War II. Working in supply and logistics, he returned to the African Gold Coast, to run a staging post for USAF planes being ferried to the Middle East. On return home in 1944, Bamford