Jimmy Greenlees was the Glasgow engineer who produced the outline general arrangement drawings for a revolutionary turbine-blade making machine designed and built in Pollokshaws.

Code-named ECM (electro-chemical machine), the sophisticated apparatus could produce up to four aero-engine turbine blades in 25 minutes regardless of hardness of the metal involved, thus hugely altering standard production times. In 1961, development and manufacture of the ECM was entrusted under licence from Rolls-Royce to Crow Hamilton & Co, a small

general engineers operating from a converted wooden First World War aircraft hangar in Haggs Road.

Greenlees's drawings were pieces of artwork in their own right, drawn on tracing paper in an era before computer-aided design, using only set-square, angle pieces, and a 2H pencil sharpened to Jimmy's favourite chisel point. From his little drawing office high above the workshop floor, drawings flowed off his board, the mechanical plans enlivened and enhanced by 3-D views, exploded diagrams, and perspective outlines.

His cheerful departure from conventional third-angle projection may have dismayed his more orthodox colleagues, but down on the factory floor his artwork made clear the purpose of the finished piece.

Greenlees headed a generation of new blood into what had previously been a 25-strong company producing solid but unimaginative machine tools for the tube, boiler, and steam locomotive industry. The advent of the ECM changed all that, and electronics began to replace Clyde-built machinery. With his input, the original four-head horizontal ECM was further developed in single-head and vertical models.

At his beloved drawing board, Greenlees affected a relaxed view of life, his tall frame leaning forward in his trademark pose of surprised interest, and always with time to help a young apprentice.

Greenlees might have progressed, but when the company moved production to Hereford in the late 1960s, home ties in Giffnock proved too strong, and he retired early to the house in Fenwick Road that had been in the family since 1932.

Art and engineering ran in his genes. His great-grandfather Robert Greenlees was a watercolourist and painter who was head of Glasgow School of Art, and ancestral relatives included artist James Greenlees, and William Greenlees, an engineer who worked for Sir William Arrol & Co on the building of the Forth bridge.

Educated at Shawlands Academy and the Royal

College of Science and Technology (now Strathclyde University), he took an engineering apprenticeship then a post with Henry Wiggin, part of an international nickel company whose Scottish interests were based in the Argus works in Carnwadric. His artistic abilities were also recognised, and for a time in the late 1930s he produced a pocket cartoon for the Glasgow Evening News.

At home, his wider family were on the receiving end of a minor torrent of cartoons, caricatures, and Christmas cards, all the product of a pen which in a few strokes captured the essence of a situation. His output continued in spite of disabling illness two years ago. He died working on a caricature of himself, a figure in flying helmet, leather jacket, silk scarf, and goggles, at the controls of a streamlined turbo-Zimmer.

He is survived by his younger sister, Vera), and her family.

James Greenlees; born October 16, 1912 , died December 1, 2002 .