From NORRIS McWHIRTER
C. H. W. Lilley’s letter (1 June) about the team from BTH in Rugby who
worked with Sir Frank Whittle in 1936-37 is part of an interesting pattern
– the small numbers of eyewitnesses at such great but lonely moments in
the history of technology.
The Wright brothers had five witnesses in 1903; only a 16-year-old office
boy, William Taynton (1910-1976) saw Baird’s television breakthrough on
2 October 1925; Goddard’s first liquid-filled rocket launch was seen by
a crowd of four, and only John Atanasoff and his assistant Clifford Berry
(1918-1963) were privy to the first functioning of an electronic computer,
on an unrecorded date in October 1939.
The names of the four other witnesses of the vital fourth test-bed run
of Whittle’s engine, the WU-1, on 12 April 1937 were Harry Webb, Harry Bentley
and Messrs. Bailey and Berry. If any reader has any personal details such
as places and dates of birth and death of these historic witnesses, I am
sure other readers, including myself, would be delighted to learn of them.
Norris McWhirter London
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