that he leave the company. The name 'Godrej & Boyce Mfg. Co.' was retained. Trip to England and subsequent development In England, Ardeshir visited the Chubb factory in Wolverhampton, since Chubb, together with Milner, had the exclusive rights to export security equipment to India. Ardeshir was made to feel welcome, and given a guided tour of the manufacturing facilities, giving Ardeshir the chance not only to observe how his competitor did things, but also to determine weaknesses in their products. Ardeshir made copious notes, and upon returning to Bombay, implemented many of the methods he observed on his European tour. While he had been away Pirojsha had doubled the size of the factory, which now employed 600 people. Following his trip, Ardeshir continued experimenting with safes, and the business took off following the San Francisco earthquake, where the subsequent fire caused more damage than the earthquake itself. Following the publication a subsequent article in Scientific American (26 May 1908) that revealed that most safes were in fact not fireproof, Ardeshir held a public demonstration to prove that the safes would protect the contents in the advent of a fire. The demonstration was a resounding success, but it would not be until the Calcutta Dharamtalla Street fire of April 1925 when the safes demonstrated their worth in that conflagration. The supreme test came in 1944, eight years after Ardeshir's death. The fires that resulted from an ammunition explosion at Bombay's Victoria docks raged for days, and the loss of life and property was enormous, but the contents in many of the Godrej safes survived, including one belonging to a bank. Creation of Godrej Soaps On 1 May 1928, Ardeshir transferred sole ownership and control of the company to his brother Pirojsha. He then moved to Nasik, 185 km north of Bombay, to try his hand at farming. Although that venture was unsuccessful, Ardeshir did not cease to be the inventor. When his attention was drawn to the fact that all soaps in the world contained tallow and other animal fats (inappropriate to many stringently vegetarian Hindus), he found a method to manufacture soap from vegetable oils, a procedure that everyone told him was impossible. Ardeshir and the Independence Movement Around 1909 Ardeshir read an article by Dadabhai Naoroji on the impoverishment of India through unfair trade practices and excessive taxation levied by the colonial authorities. His interest roused, Ardeshir applied to