Donald Hings

Donald Lewes Hings was a British-Canadian inventor who lived from 1907 to 2004, born in Leicester, England. In 1937 he created a portable radio signaling system for his employer CM&S, which he called a packset, and which was the first aircraft communications radio but later became known as the walkie-talkie for use on the ground. While he was filing a United States patent for the aircraft packset in Spokane, Washington, in 1939, Canada declared war on Germany, and CM&S sent him to Ottawa to redevelop his invention for military use, where he worked from 1940 to 1945.