After the Daventry Demonstration - Robert Watson Watt

Robert Watson Watt was born in Aberdeenshire in 1892. He took his Physics degree at Dundee University and joined the Meteorological Office in 1915 and was soon based at the R.A.F. establishment at Farnborough. His main responsibility was to devise methods of detecting thunderstorms. One special characteristic that might be utilized was the large quantities of electrostatic energy that is dissipated by a thunderstorm.

Storm detection was considered very important because the early aircraft were not constructed to cope with bad weather and so it was imperative that they should have prior warning of any oncoming stormy weather and also to know the direction of that storm.
In 1922, the first cathode ray tubes were made available and he managed to combine this new technology with a basic radio direction finder [RDF].

Thus in 1923, with the assistance of J.F.Herd, he managed to construct a low-sensitivity radio direction finder that could give the direction of an incoming storm. By 1927, he was appointed the first Superintendent of the Radio Research Station at Slough. This unit was under the auspices of the National Physical Laboratory. In his role as Superintendent, Watson Watt was generally popular, considerate to his staff, always enthusiastic and kept in close contact with the work of his team.
His internal memos were quite famous for he would often write them on the back of calendar leaves.

The reputation of his unit for high quality and innovative research explains why H.E. Wimperis
sought his views concerning the issues that A.P.Rowe had raised.

However, there was another side to this man; his biographer (Ronald Clark)describes him as a, " blunt, outspoken, self-confident, exuberant, ambitious and devoutly patriotic man".

Dr G. L. Hutchinson

It is therefore more accurate to say of Watson Watt that he was the man who had the tenacity and ability to pull a number of ideas and strands together from his own work and that of other people. History suggests that he owed a particular debt of gratitude to the capabilities of his assistant at the time, A.F. Wilkins.
He was knighted in 1942, awarded the US Medal of Merit in 1946 and died in 1973.

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