George Millington


 

 

Introduction

This page is not yet a biography but a collection of notes detailing memories of George by those who knew him.

 

Notes

 

Patty Gibb:
George worked in the Chief of the Propagation and Mathematical Group in Chelmsford, which work involved investigating high frequency radio waves. George received the Faraday Medal in 1974.

NB: Patty was a neighbour and was enquiring about a "what prestigious award George Millington received in 1978" which initiated the collection of the following notes.

 

Chris Gardiner:
George Millington was certainly a veteran having joined Marconi in 1931 and might well have met Marconi, who died in 1937, although in the later years of his life he spent most of his time in Italy.

Alan Matthews:
In the mid 1950s I lived in Chelmerton Avenue Great Baddow and George Millington lived further down the road.
I did not really know him, but remember  he was a small man with glasses who lived with his sister, that he played the organ and was a research scientist at Baddow labs.
I think my aunt with whom I lodged knew him slightly and I seem to think he was an organist at Chelmsford Cathedral.

Roy Simons:
I suggest that his Appleton Lecture of 1970 is a good summary of his time in Section E under Eckersley. The description of the experimental work is fascinating. He had a worldwide reputation as a lecturer on propagation and was awarded the Faraday Medal by the IEE.
He lived with his sister. He went everywhere by bicycle. He was a devoted Church member. He was an excellent pianist and organist.
Many of my generation went to his lectures at the Mid Essex Tech. He spoke about the new functions that he had invented that allowed a better of understanding of propagation forecasting. Very difficult to keep up with his maths.

David Emery:
His work remains relevant to low frequency radar. Many times I have explained the ability of the HFSWR at Bradwell to detect and track ships in the English Channel (despite the Isle of Thanet land-mass being on the ground-wave propagation path) using the Millington Effect for mixed propagation paths. He developed a relatively simple method for predicting ground-wave propagation of radio waves over mixed ground types (e.g. a section of dry land followed by the sea). Arguing that there must be reciprocity in the forward and backward paths,he recommended averaging the results from applying Eckersley's (incorrect) prediction method in both directions. This results in an interesting recovery phenomenon, such that at a land to sea transition, the ground-wave field strength increases markedly. His work was validated by measurements made by himself and Isted in 1950.

Alan Hartley-Smith:
This is extracted from Gerald Speake's paper on Baddow Research:
In 1919 T.L. Eckersley, who was to become one of the world's foremost experts in the theory of propagation of electromagnetic waves joined the Company and the results obtained by his researchers encouraged Marconi to believe that a worldwide communication system based on the use of short waves was practicable. In April 1940 the Air Ministry took over part of the laboratories, including Eckersley's team, which had been joined in the 1930's by G. Millington, also to become an internationally respected authority on electromagnetic wave propagation.

 

Ian Gillis:

George gave a lecture at the Plume Library in Maldon, Essex in 1975 entitled Radio Waves.

 

Malcolm Mack

An article on George Millington can be found in the Dec 1953 edition of "Marconi Companies and their People" (Pg 8).