C. E. Wynn-Williams
C. E. Wynn-Williams | |
---|---|
Duddell Medal and Prize (1957) | |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Physicist |
Institutions | Imperial College, London, Telecommunications Research Establishment |
Doctoral advisor | Ernest Rutherford |
Charles Eryl Wynn-Williams (5 March 1903 – 30 August 1979), was a Welsh physicist,[1] noted for his research on electronic instrumentation for use in nuclear physics. His work on the scale-of-two counter contributed to the development of the modern computer.
Early life and studies
Wynn-Williams was born at 'Glasfryn' in
Wynn-Williams was Liberal in politics and was a Welsh-speaker. On 12 August 1943 he married in London Annie Eiluned James (b. 1907/8), a school-teacher, with whom he had two sons.
Prewar research
In October 1925 he entered
Wynn-Williams' most significant work in this period, however, was in the development of electronic instrumentation for use in radioactivity and nuclear physics.[2] Like many scientists at that time he was a wireless enthusiast.
In 1926 he employed his electronics skills to construct an amplifier using thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) for very small electrical currents. It was realized that such devices could be used in the detection and counting of Alpha particles in the nuclear disintegration experiments then being undertaken by Rutherford, who encouraged him to devote his attention to the construction of a reliable valve amplifier and methods of registering and counting particles.
There followed a series of brilliant contributions to the armamentarium of nuclear physics. In 1929–30, with H. M. Cave and F. A. B. Ward he designed and constructed a binary prescaler for an electro-mechanical counter using thyratrons.[3] By 1931 a valve amplifier and thyratron-based automatic counting system were in regular use in the Cavendish Laboratory.[4] Wynn-Williams' amplifier played an important part in James Chadwick's discovery of the neutron in 1932, and in numerous other experiments.
In 1932 Wynn-Williams published details of his thyratron-based scale-of-two counter,[5] which allowed particles to be counted at much higher rates than previously. His devices became crucial unifying elements in the hardware of the emergent discipline of nuclear physics, as they opened up new avenues of research. They were widely copied in laboratories in Europe and the United States of America, often with advice from Wynn-Williams.
In 1935 Wynn-Williams was appointed assistant lecturer in physics at Imperial College, London. Continuing his work on electronic instrumentation he contributed to the development of nuclear physics at Imperial under G. P. Thomson.
Wartime
On the eve of the
On 1 February 1942, the Allied success in breaking Nazi German naval Enigma messages suffered a serious setback.[6] This was due to the adoption, for the North Atlantic U-boat traffic, of an Enigma machine with an additional rotor — the four-wheel Enigma. This increased the time required of the Turing-designed Bombe machines by a factor of 26. Higher speed bombes were therefore needed and Wynn-Williams was called in to contribute to one of the streams of development of high-speed Bombes.
The Post Office team developed a Bombe attachment for a standard three-wheel Bombe containing high speed wheels and an electronic sensing unit. It was attached to the Bombe by a very thick cable and was dubbed the Cobra Bombe.
Towards the end of 1942 the previously experimental non-
Knowing of Wynn-Williams' work on electronic counters at Cambridge, he called for his help. He worked with a team from the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill, which later included Tommy Flowers.[10] They constructed a machine to do this that was dubbed Heath Robinson after the cartoonist who designed fantastical machines. The series of Robinson machines were forerunners of the ten Colossus machines, the world's first programmable digital electronic computers.[11]
Postwar
Returning to Imperial College after the war, Wynn-Williams devoted himself largely to the development of practical undergraduate teaching, where he was an accomplished and much liked instructor.
Like most who worked at Bletchley Park, Wynn-Williams did not receive official recognition for his wartime work, and he always observed the oath of secrecy surrounding it, although he retained an interest in codes and puzzles throughout his life. Professor R. V. Jones, UK Government Scientific Intelligence advisor in the second World War, wrote in Nature in 1981:[14]
... the modern computer is only possible because of an invention made by a physicist, C. E.Wynn-Williams, in 1932 for counting nuclear particles: the scale-of-two counter, which may prove to be one of the most influential of all inventions.
On his retirement in 1970 Wynn-Williams and his wife moved to
References
- ^ Hughes 2004
- ^ a b Copeland 2006, p. 64
- ^ Wynn-Williams 1931
- ^ Rutherford, Wynn-Williams & Lewis 1931
- ^ Wynn-Williams 1932
- ^ Hodges 1992, p. 222
- ^ Budiansky 2000, p. 235
- ^ Jones 2010
- ^ Budiansky 2000, p. 360
- ^ Copeland 2006, p. 71
- ^ Randell 1980, pp. 1, 9
- ^ Ward 1980, pp. 117–118
- ^ Wynn-Williams 1957, pp. 53–60
- ^ Jones 1981, pp. 23–25
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-0-684-85932-3
- ISBN 978-0-19-825080-7
- ISBN 978-0-19-284055-4.
- ISBN 978-0-19-280132-6
- ISBN 978-0-09-911641-7
- Hughes, Jeffrey A. (2004). "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Williams, Charles Eryl Wynn- (1903–1979)". required.)
- Jones, L H (21 September 2010), Firm's vital role in Enigma project is revealed at last, retrieved 22 March 2011
- S2CID 118583316
- McKay, Sinclair (2010), The Secret life of Bletchley Park, London: Arum Press, pp. 261, 267, ISBN 978-1-84513-539-3
- Randell, Brian (1980), "The Colossus", A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 22 July 2011, retrieved 22 March 2011
- Sale, Tony, The Colossus its purpose and operation: The machine age comes to Fish code breaking, retrieved 15 March 2011
- Turing, Alan M. (December 1942), Visit to National Cash Register Corporation of Dayton, Ohio (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 16 November 2010, retrieved 2 March 2010
- Ward, F. A. B. (3 January 1980), "Obituary: C. E. Wynn-Williams", Nature, 283 (5742): 117–118, doi:10.1038/283117b0
- ISBN 0-14-005305-0
- Wynn-Williams, C. E. (2 July 1931), "The Use of Thyratrons for High Speed Automatic Counting of Physical Phenomena",
- Wynn-Williams, C. E. (2 May 1932), "A Thyratron "Scale of Two" Automatic counter", JSTOR 95771
- Wynn-Williams, C E (1957), "The Scale-of-Two Counter", Physical Society Yearbook: 53–60