Robert Watson-Watt was a Scottish radio engineer who began his career at the Meteorological Office, studying how radio waves reflected off distant thunderstorms. On February 26, 1935, working with his assistant Arnold Wilkins near Daventry, England, he used a BBC shortwave transmitter and a van full of radio receivers to detect the reflected signal of a Handley Page Heyford bomber several miles away, the demonstration now remembered as the Daventry Experiment. Its success led directly to Chain Home, the network of coastal radar stations Watson-Watt went on to design for Britain, which gave the Royal Air Force the early warning historians credit with helping it win the Battle of Britain. He was knighted in 1942 for the work and is popularly remembered as radar's inventor, though the German engineer Christian Hulsmeyer had patented a working radio-echo detection device three decades earlier. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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Led development of practical radar for aircraft detection.
In Field
Source A History of TechnologyCharles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors
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Radar, Inventions Why this is disputed. Britain's Chain Home network, built from Watson-Watt's 1935 Daventry Experiment, is the direct ancestor of every operational radar system that followed, and popular history credits him as radar's inventor on that basis. German engineer Christian Hulsmeyer had already patented a working radio-echo detection device in 1904, three decades earlier, though his telemobiloscope never became an operational system.
Source Robert Watson-Watt (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
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1. Robert Watson-Watt (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationAircraft detection and location section
two receiving antennae located about 6 miles (10 km) away from one of the BBC's shortwave broadcast stations
Infobox
Death: 5 December 1973 (aged 81) in Inverness, Scotland
Invented: Radar, RADAR section
provided the vital advance information that helped the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain
View the Source A History of Technology
Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors, Oxford University Press, 1954- In Category: Engineer
- In Field: Electrical Engineering
View the Source Frequently Asked Questions
How did Robert Watson-Watt go from studying lightning to developing radar?
A death-ray inquiry in 1935 turned into a demonstration of radio detection of aircraft, which became the Chain Home radar network in 1938.
Watson-Watt began at the Meteorological Office in 1916, looking for ways to track thunderstorms by the radio waves lightning gives off, which led to the high-frequency direction finding system known as huff-duff. In 1935 he was asked to comment on reports of a German death ray based on radio, and he and his assistant Arnold Frederic Wilkins quickly determined it was not possible. Wilkins suggested using radio signals to locate aircraft at long distances, which led to a February 1935 demonstration of signals from a BBC short-wave transmitter bounced off a Handley Page Heyford aircraft. Watt led development of a practical version, which entered service in 1938 as Chain Home and gave the Royal Air Force advance warning during the Battle of Britain.
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