Lancelot de Mole

Lancelot de Mole was an Australian mechanical engineer and surveyor who designed an early tracked armored fighting vehicle and submitted it to British authorities in 1912, 1914 and 1916. The Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors later found that his design had anticipated, and in some respects surpassed, the tanks actually built during the First World War, but bureaucratic mishandling and the absence of an established military need at the time meant his proposals were never taken up. The commission reimbursed only his out-of-pocket expenses rather than rewarding the invention itself, though de Mole was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1920 for his contribution. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/