Identity area
Type of entity
Corporate body
Authorized form of name
R.F.D. Ltd
Parallel form(s) of name
- RFD Ltd
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1920-2003
History
R.F.D. Ltd was formed in 1920 by British engineer Reginald Foster Dagnall (1888-1942), using the initials of his name. He had been involved in making airships and balloons from when he was 22 with the Willows Company, then Spence Bros. and later Airships Ltd. where he became general manager. Dagnall had experimented with inflatable boats since before the First World War and in 1932 RFD invented the first inflatable life raft. The company was based in Godalming from 1936 and expanded rapidly during the Second World War filing large numbers of patents. Dagnall died in 1942 but the company continued, selling the Godalming site in 1986 and moving manufacturing to Northern Ireland. In 2003 it merged with Beaufort (Air-Sea) Equipment Ltd to become RFD Beaufort Ltd, later acquired by Survitec Group.
Places
Legal status
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Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Relationships area
Related entity
RFD Beaufort Ltd (2003-2016)
Identifier of related entity
Category of relationship
temporal
Type of relationship
RFD Beaufort Ltd is the successor of R.F.D. Ltd
Dates of relationship
2003
Description of relationship
R.F.D Ltd merged with Beaufort (Air-Sea) Equipment Ltd in 2003.
Access points area
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Control area
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Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
Status
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Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Language(s)
Script(s)
Sources
Harold Nockolds, Rescue from Disaster: The History of the RFD Group (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1980)
Reginald Foster Dagnall (1888-1942) Godalming Museum, https://www.godalmingmuseum.org.uk/index.php?page=reginald-foster-dagnall [accessed 8 August 2022]
Reginald Foster Dagnall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Foster_Dagnall [accessed 7 February 2020].
Survitec Group https://survitecgroup.com/about-us/our-history/ [accessed 7 February 2020].
Reginald Foster Dagnall (1888-1942) Godalming Museum, https://www.godalmingmuseum.org.uk/index.php?page=reginald-foster-dagnall [accessed 8 August 2022]
Reginald Foster Dagnall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Foster_Dagnall [accessed 7 February 2020].
Survitec Group https://survitecgroup.com/about-us/our-history/ [accessed 7 February 2020].