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Introduction

This is largely based on extracts from What’s in a Name?, an article written by Don Halstead for Topic in May 1993, reviewing possible names for what became known as Eastwood House. Curiously, although Robert Telford still had an office in Marconi House as Life President of The Marconi Company, it was several years before he discovered, much to his delight, the Eastwood reference, and then only because Don wrote to him on a quite different topic on a piece of MRCS headed stationery!

So what has C S Franklin got to do with radar? As had Marconi, Franklin had a vision that radio waves might well be used to detect objects at a distance.

On page 280 of  A History of The Marconi Company (up to 1966), W.J. Baker wrote: 'To mention all the outstanding engineers of the Company's first three decades would be to provide a long and tedious list. There are, however, two whose names constantly recur...namely Franklin and Round.' No history of the Marconi Company would be complete without them, as they were so frequently the' instruments of bringing history into being; so much so, in fact, that the life and technological achievements of either would occupy a book in its own right

Charles Samuel Franklin was born in 1879, the youngest of a family of 13 and so weakly that on more than one occasion during childhood his life was despaired of. Somehow he survived and in due course received an engineering and scientific training at the  Finsbury Technical College, where he studied under the famous Professor Silvanus Thompson. Franklin joined The Marconi Company in 1899 and was promptly sent to South Africa as one of the engineers in charge of the wireless apparatus used in the Boer War. On his return he became an installation engineer and wireless operator and was the operator aboard the Philadelphia on the occasion when Marconi, who was also aboard, provided irrefutable evidence that wireless waves could cross the Atlantic. After a two-year spell of installing and demonstrating wireless equipment in Russia, Franklin once more returned home and was soon singled out as one of Marconi's personal assistants. There followed a long and distinguished career in which he eventually became Chief of Independent Research.

Sixty-five patents stand to Franklin's credit; an impressive total, but no less impressive is the longevity of many of the devices he invented. The variable capacitor (patented in 1902), ganged tuning (1907), variable coupling (1907) and many others, including the Franklin master oscillator and the coaxial cable, are still in wide use today.

His most spectacular achievement was of course the short wave beam system, which for more than 40 years was the world's mainstay for long-distance radio communication. Considering the speed at which he engineered this it is almost incredible to find that examples of his SWB1 transmitter of 1924 vintage were still handling daily beam traffic in 1962 (and may well be doing so today in some part of the world). This instance is typical of Franklin's immaculate standards of design. One of his last achievements, before he retired from the Company in 1937 was the sound and vision antenna for the BBC's first television transmitter at AlexandraPalace. Ally Pally went off the air in the middle of a Mickey Mouse cartoon film on 1 September 1939 to prevent it being used as a target beacon by German bombers. Interestingly, it subsequently came back on air as Operation Domino, a very successful counter-measure to the Y-Gerat beams used to guide German bombers to their targets; see description here. What must Franklin have made of that – he lived until 1964.

By the time Franklin retired, work was well advanced on the British radar system; by 1937 five radar stations covered the approach to London via the Thames estuary; the success of these prompted the ordering of 20 more stations in May 1937

But as early as 1916 Marconi and Franklin, working in Italy, turned their attention to short waves (about two metres) and found in the course of their experiments that these were being reflected by obstacles in the path of the signals. Marconi did not pursue the speculation, not least because the development of the short-wave beam system took precedence, but round about 1930 Franklin wrote:

'Shadows and reflections from objects when using such (ultra short) waves had been observed for some years. I was interested in forming a wireless picture using centimetre or millimetre waves in a manner analogous to the optical picture obtained by a camera. It can be done ...but owing to changing conditions I was never able to get the work organised.'

Baker wrote: 'Franklin's tentative experiments were done about 1930. It will be noted that he proposed the use of centimetric and millimetric waves, as used today. It is also interesting to see that he refers to a picture (as distinct from a shadow) analogous to that obtained by a camera. Could it be that Franklin had in mind the illumination of a target with multiple beams of various frequencies or by sweeping  a beam through a band of frequencies?”

Baker again: 'It can be said with certainty that in its early days the Company was blessed with a galaxy of extreme able engineers, among whom the twin stars Round and Franklin burned with fierce brilliance... They shared three traits; both had an almost fanatical loyalty to Guliemo Marconi and no one else; both were essentially lone wolf researchers who were only happy when following their own inspirations and both had a sublime disregard for administrative authority which to them was synonymous with bureaucracy. In short, they were inspired rebels!' Apparently it was not unusual for Works management to discover that equipment runs were being produced without any formal authorisation, merely at the behest of Captain Round.

For the record, Herbert Joseph Round joined the Company in 1902, filed 117 patents (the last as late as 1962) and was still working on new ideas on his death bed at the age of 81.

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