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Submission for proposed centenary History

This account was written at the solicitation of Sir Robert Telford, as one of several contributions by radar staff requested by him in 1992 to guide the content of a new Marconi History proposed to be published for the centenary celebrations in 1997. Unfortunately this never happened – another casualty of the machinations within the company managements prior to that date. However, several of the accounts have survived in the archives at Sandford Mill, and, where possible, with the permission of the authors they are being included, with minor editing, as personal reminiscences in our History. They should be read bearing in mind the context for which they were intended and the period in which they were produced.

These notes are written on Ted Wells' behalf as he is too ill to write himself. Most of his immediate colleagues have also retired and it is not easy to discover all the various studies and projects to which he contributed.

Prior to the period covered by the History, Ted had worked as a Senior Engineer under the late Mervyn Morgan. The work of his Mobile Navigation Aids team included research into doppler navigator radars for aircraft and improved marine radars.

At that time signal processing was always performed by analogue means, using conventional pulse-MT!, coherent FM/CW or coherent pulse doppler techniques. Ted was the Marconi Research expert on coherent radar which he had worked on since the early 1950s.

Marconi Research was reorganised at the end of 1965, and Ted became Chief of the Systems Evaluation Group, working in the Transmission Techniques Laboratory under Dr. Gordon Coop, with responsibility for research into new radar systems as well as systems evaluation. Colleagues at that time included the late Eric Davies, J.W.Ewart Jones and O.E.Keall.

The Seawolf radar project began in 1966, leading to the design, development and construction of prototypes of the surveillance and tracking radars for the GWS25 naval point defence missile system. Both of these radars used the coherent pulse doppler techniques which Ted's team had pioneered, and much of the credit for the success of the Seawolf system must be due to the soundness of his basic design. The STAR within-pulse scanning research was also under way at this time.

In 1973 Ted succeeded Gordon as Manager of the Radar Research Laboratory, a post which he held until illness forced his early retirement at the end of 1981. His five groups were led by Trevor Robinson, High Power Systems; W.F.(Uncle) Miller and later, Stuart Radcliffe, Receivers; Tom Hair, Low Power Systems (including infra-red as well as small radar sensors); Ken Perry, Microwave Engineering and Matthew Radford, Systems Research. During this period the early research on resistive beam formers was performed, leading to the design of the beamformer which later formed the heart of the Martello long range radar. Space qualified components were developed in the Microwave Group. Many other research programmes were initiated under Ted's leadership, including several international studies and projects.

Those who have had the privilege of working with Ted remember him as a leader who gave his engineers the maximum freedom and encouragement to pursue their ideas, but ensured that the ideas were properly thought through. His clear and penetrating mind contributed to the success of many different systems, both within and beyond his laboratory, and the products which grew from the seeds he planted are still being harvested.

In March 2020 this addition was forwarded by Tim Wander on behalf of his son Mark Wells - it also has some details of his maternal grandfather's career in wireless in the navy in WW1

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