JCB (company) as a generic description for mechanical diggers and excavators and now appears in the "Oxford English Dictionary", although it is still held as a trademark. JCB was founded by Joseph Cyril Bamford in October 1945 in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, England. He rented a lock-up garage . In it, using a welding set which he bought second-hand for £1 from English Electric, he made his first vehicle, a tipping trailer from war-surplus materials. The trailer's sides and floor were made from steel sheet that had been part of air raid shelters. On the same day as his son Anthony was born, he
Cyril Ritchard on 25 November 1977, aged 78, while appearing as the narrator in the Chicago touring company of "Side by Side by Sondheim". He died nearly a month later in Chicago, aged 79, and was buried at Saint Mary's Cemetery in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where he had long resided in his rural home. His funeral mass was celebrated by Archbishop Fulton Sheen. His wife predeceased him in 1955 as did a baby boy who died in infancy in 1939. Cyril Ritchard Cyril Joseph Trimnell-Ritchard (1 December 1898 – 18 December 1977), known professionally as Cyril Ritchard, was an Australian stage, screen and