Precocious youngster Crompton had a busy childhood. A Naval cadet at eleven he visited the Crimean trenches, came under fire and won the Crimean medal and Sevastopol clasp. Back home at school he built a full-sized, working road locomotive. Cheerful, resourceful and inquisitive he was a popular man. He married Elizabeth Gertrude in 1871 and had five children.
Rejoining the army in India he continued his engineering work, replacing bullock trains with his steam locomotives. Paid a government grant of £500 he left the army and bought a partnership in an engineering firm. Asked to light a foundry he became interested in the generation of electricity. He won the first gold medal for electric lighting at the Paris Exhibition for his plants in Glasgow, London and Vienna. Crompton set up the Kensington Court Company in 1886 and a volunteer electrical engineering corps in 1890, which visited India and South Africa to advise on electrical projects. Supporting standardisation he established the National Physical Laboratory, now called the British Standards Institution. Away from electricity he founded the RAC in 1896, judged the first motor show in 1903 and sat on the government road board in 1910.
Kensington Court was Crompton’s home and laboratory, where he made many of his discoveries. His Kensington Court Company was one of the pioneering electricity suppliers, supplying the first electrically lit private house in 1879.