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I know of no easily available history of the Taycol company anywhere. It was a British company, with premises at Bournemouth, and produced a range of medium to large model marine electric motors. So this is my impression of what the company produced, gleaned from discussions with knowledgable people, and what I have found on the Internet.

Early smaller Taycol motors such as the Comet and the Star were permanent magnet, but the classic motors produced by Taycol in its heyday were all field-wound. I have not got a comprehensive history of the total range of motors which Taycol produced, but the models I show below are regularly found on ebay, and, I believe, constitute the total output of the company.

I get regular requests for this site to provide dates for Taycol manufacturing. Having kept an eye on the market for these motors for a while, and noting mentions of them in a few old periodicals, I have been able to make a guess at a possible timeline for their production.

This is ONLY a guess - I have done no in-depth research on the subject so there WILL be errors in this list - in fact, ALL the data may well be in error. I offer it, not as definitive data, but as a framework for others to criticise and improve. Please check your old magazines - tell me where I am wrong, and we may be able to produce a better history. In the meantime, my first cut is here:

A Guess at Taycol Production History

The Field Coil motors usually had an laminated iron frame with a single field coil mounted on it above the armature, except for the largest two of the range, which had twin coils mounted at each side. The brush gear of most of them was lightly made out of brass strip, and might burn out under heavy load, but the Standard, Supermarine and Double had distinctive brush gear made from coiled copper gauze, contacting a massive paxolin and brass commutator. These last three could take 12v, the rest were typically 4.5v-6v.

Taycol made their field-wound motors in families, reusing parts as much as possible. The five smaller motors all have the same paxolin end-plates, armature and laminated iron frame, so they are all the same width and height - they simply have more laminations added to increase the power. The two large motors again share the same paxolin plates, armature, spacers and brush gear - the difference here is that the Double is made wider rather than longer to accomodate a larger coil. The Taycol design is exceptionally flexible in this respect.

The motors you are most likely to come across nowadays are: