1903 - 1913

1903 - The Lodge brothers decided to go into business together and took out a patent for an improved system of high-tension ignition, which their father had discovered during his experimental work on electric condenser discharges. They named the company Lodge Bros.

1907 - The brothers built a new workshop and offices in Wrentham Street, Birmingham, and made the bold decision to take a stand at the Motor Show at Olympia.

1908 - In the meantime another inventor of resource based in Rugby was developing the sparking plug. Bernard Hopps had left the British Thomson Houston Company in 1908 to form his own Mascot company, and a year afterwards he took out his important patent for making a gastight joint in a plug by means of fused glass.

1913 - Both Lodge Bros. and the Mascot Company had the common aim of producing the best possible sparking plug. Both firms had much to offer one another, and so in 1913 they decided to amalgamate, under the title of the Lodge Sparking Plug Company Ltd. this retained the Wrentham Street premises in Birmingham and the factory in Albert Street, Rugby.

As a result of the merger the hopeful motorist gained for the first time an efficient, gastight, non-detachable plug; and when a little later mica was introduced for the insulation of the centre-pin the internal combustion engine was carried a stage further towards reliability.