The Honorable Charles Stewart Rolls was born on August 27, 1877, the son of a wealthy British noble family. As such, he could have lived the life of an Edwardian playboy. Instead he chose to work and make significant contributions to the aerodynamics and automobile industries, both new to England at the time.

He first studied at Eton. During his time there he was very interested in engines and never hesitated to get his hands dirty working on them. This earned him the nickname ‘Dirty Rolls’. When he finished at Eton, he enrolled in a crammer to prepare for admission to Trinity College, Cambridge. He was admitted in 1894 and began to study mechanics and applied science.

In 1896, when he turned 18, Rolls went to Paris to buy his first car. He bought a Peugeot Phaeton and joined the Paris Auto Club. When he brought his Phaeton back to England, it became the first car in Cambridge and one of the first three cars in Wales. He earned a BA from Trinity in 1898 and later earned an MA. On leaving university the young Rolls worked on a steam yacht and was later employed by the London and North Western Railway in Crewe.

However, his talent and passion lie in motorsports and salesmanship rather than engineering. So, in June 1903, he borrowed £6,600 from his father and founded one of Britain’s first car dealers, CS Rolls and Co. It was located in Fulhom and began importing French Peugeot and Belgian Minerva vehicles for sale in the UK. british market.

Rolls was active in promoting motoring in England and joined the Self-Propelled Traffic Association, an organization which campaigned against the restrictions on motor vehicles that had been imposed by the Locomotive Act. He was also a founding member of the Automobile Club of Great Britain.

It was through a friend at the Automobile Club that Rolls was introduced to Henry Royce. Although Rolls preferred cars with three or four cylinders, he was impressed with the two-cylinder Royce 10. On December 23, 1904, the two men signed an agreement whereby Rolls would buy all the cars that Royce could make. They would be marketed as a Rolls Royce. The first ten horsepower Rolls Royce was exhibited at the Paris Salon in December 1904. Then in 1906 Rolls Royce Ltd. was formed with Rolls employed as Technical Manager. The two were a perfect match. Rolls had the capital and the business sense, while Royce provided the technical expertise.

However, Rolls had also been active in promoting aviation. He was the second person in Britain to receive a pilot’s license from the Royal Aero Club. He soon got bored with automobiles and wanted to spend more time flying, so in 1909 he resigned as Technical Manager and became a non-executive director.

He bought a Wright Flyer and on June 2, 1910, he set a record as the first pilot to make a non-stop double crossing of the English Channel. His flight lasted 95 minutes. He died on July 12, 1910 while flying and became the first Briton to die in a plane crash.