How could I find details...if there are any.... about a party from either Firth Brown, Firth Brearley or William Grants... travelling to Germany, I think it was prior to WW1, to see how steel was being made there.
I've had a quick look through the newspapers on FMP but was unable to find anything - perhaps someone else will have more luck. I did find, though, a couple of articles about a Herr Krupp von Bohlen (owner of the German steel manufacturing firm Krupp) visiting the steel works here and in other cities in 1913 Firth Brown is used as an example of one of the steelworks he visited in Sheffield. This visit causing great consternation in 1914 once the war had started.
I found an article from 1918 which said that a Mr A. Deighton, General Manager of Steel Peech & Tozer, had visited Germany during the 8-9 years before the war, and had seen every steel works of note, some of them several times over. Presumably other Sheffield firms did the same.
There was a big expo in Dusseldorf in 1902. According to the Edinburgh Evening News of Saturday 19 July 1902 the British Iron and Steel Institute annual meeting was held there to take in the exhibition, with a delegation of about 800 from the UK visiting “all the leading German iron and steel works on the Rhine, and in Westphalia” in September of that year.
There MUST have been a substantial Sheffield contingent in that lot.
There might be more details (or details of other visits) in the journal of the institute, but that’s in JSTOR which I can’t access. Might be worth a look? I would have researched a bit more in old papers but the site I use is going offline rather a lot recently with technical problems.
I don’t know what became of the British Iron and Steel Institute or if it’s related to the institute which used to have research labs in Sheffield, but someone on here will know if you need to find out.