The company was founded by James Hutchinson Mann, a native of Leeds. Mann had been apprenticed to J&H McLaren & Co. and also worked for Marshall, Sons & Co. of Gainsborough. In January 1894 he commenced a partnership with Sidney Charlesworth under the title Mann and Charlesworth, and their works was in Canning Street, off Dewsbury Road, Leeds. This company manufactured traction engines, stationery engines and road rollers. One of their notable inventions was the single eccentric reversing gear. This compact device allowed the sequence of valve opening of a steam engine to be changed, both in terms of “cut-off” and “direction” without the need for link motion and all the associated levers. In 1898 Mann and Charlesworth produced on behalf of Philip Parmiter, an agricultural steam cart using