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Papers of Phillip K. Saunders

 Single Item
MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 552

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Draft autobiography, c1945-1960. 166 pp., 11 photographs.

Dates

  • Creation: c1945-1960s

Extent

1 volume

Language of Materials

  • English

Preferred Citation

Oxford, Bodleian Libraries [followed by shelfmark and folio or page reference, e.g. MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 552].

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Shelfmark:

MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 552

Collection ID (for staff)

CMD ID 4085

Biographical / Historical

Phillip Keith Saunders (1899-1977) saw service at the beginning of World War One as a naval cadet and later engineer. After the war he was sent by his family to Brazil, where he worked and travelled widely. In c1932 he moved to Cape Town, South Africa, where he worked initially as an engineering draftsman for a company manufacturing explosives for the Johannesburg and Kimberley mines. Again, he travelled widely as well as working in the mines at Witwatersrand and inventing a pick-cock for reducing air flow. He founded a company to market his invention, returned to London and set up as a consulting engineer. He later travelled across Canada and attempted to make a success of his invention through contacts in Chicago. He eventually built up a world-wide business, though this suffered financially in the 1940s. By 1943 he was stationed in New York working for the Navy, installing anti-submarine devices on merchant vessels, eventually patenting and manufacturing his own design. Saunders remained in the United States after the war, patenting many inventions. In 1960 he published his autobiography Dr Panto Fogo. The Unidentified memoirs of a twentieth-century adventurer - his inventions and his escapades on four continents and the high seas (Prentice-Hall, 1960). He died in 1997 in North Carolina.

Other Finding Aids

The library holds a card index of all manuscript collections in its reading room.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

The papers were purchased by the South African Friends of the Bodleian on 25th August 1998.

Title
Papers of Phillip K. Saunders
Status
Published
Author
Paul Davidson
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin

Repository Details

Part of the Bodleian Libraries Repository

Contact:
Weston Library
Broad Street
Oxford OX1 3BG United Kingdom