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Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section
The Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section of the Munitions Inventions Department was an organisation set up within Lloyd George's Ministry of Munitions in early 1916. Originally based at Northholt aerodrome, in May 1916 the section moved to the National Physical Laboratory at Bushy House, Teddington before moving to ''HMS Excellent'' on Whale Island near Portsmouth in Hampshire in September 1916. The section was led by the physiologist A. V. Hill, who was previously a Captain in the Cambridgeshire Regiment. While on leave suffering from flu in January 1916, Horace Darwin approached him to work on anti-aircraft measures. Hill accepted and started to find the personnel for the unit, which acquired the nickname "Hill's Brigands". Precursors Horace Darwin's brother Leonard Darwin had been an officer in the Royal Engineers. In the 1880s he had developed a method of locating the position of a military balloon according to the x, y and z axes of Cartesian co-ordinates A Cartesia ...
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Munitions Inventions Department
The Munitions Inventions Department (MID) of the British Ministry of Munitions was created during the First World War in 1915. Its administrative structure encompassed university and industrial laboratories, private workshops, and military experimental grounds. The department made us of the experimental facilities of other government agencies, including the National Physical Laboratory at Bushy House and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). Two sister organisations were formed: The Board of Invention and Research (BIR) which was established in July 1915 to support the Admiralty, and the Air Inventions Committee (AIC), which supported the Air Board once it became become fully operational in the summer of 1917. Predecessors The readiness of the British military to tap the inventiveness of the public can be dated back to the eighteenth century. Two War Office committees, the Colonels' Committee and the Field Officers' Committee had been convened in the 1760s ...
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Portsmouth
Portsmouth ( ) is a port and city status in the United Kingdom, city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. The city of Portsmouth has been a Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority since 1 April 1997 and is administered by Portsmouth City Council. Portsmouth is the most densely populated city in the United Kingdom, with a population last recorded at 208,100. Portsmouth is located south-west of London and south-east of Southampton. Portsmouth is mostly located on Portsea Island; the only English city not on the mainland of Great Britain. Portsea Island has the third highest population in the British Isles after the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. Portsmouth also forms part of the regional South Hampshire, South Hampshire conurbation, which includes the city of Southampton and the boroughs of Eastleigh, Fareham, Gosport, Havant and Waterlooville. Portsmouth is one of the world's best known ports, its history can be traced to Roman Britain, ...
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Cartesian Co-ordinates
A Cartesian coordinate system (, ) in a plane is a coordinate system that specifies each point uniquely by a pair of numerical coordinates, which are the signed distances to the point from two fixed perpendicular oriented lines, measured in the same unit of length. Each reference coordinate line is called a ''coordinate axis'' or just ''axis'' (plural ''axes'') of the system, and the point where they meet is its ''origin'', at ordered pair . The coordinates can also be defined as the positions of the perpendicular projections of the point onto the two axes, expressed as signed distances from the origin. One can use the same principle to specify the position of any point in three-dimensional space by three Cartesian coordinates, its signed distances to three mutually perpendicular planes (or, equivalently, by its perpendicular projection onto three mutually perpendicular lines). In general, ''n'' Cartesian coordinates (an element of real ''n''-space) specify the point in ...
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Royal Engineers
The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the '' Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is headed by the Chief Royal Engineer. The Regimental Headquarters and the Royal School of Military Engineering are in Chatham in Kent, England. The corps is divided into several regiments, barracked at various places in the United Kingdom and around the world. History The Royal Engineers trace their origins back to the military engineers brought to England by William the Conqueror, specifically Bishop Gundulf of Rochester Cathedral, and claim over 900 years of unbroken service to the crown. Engineers have always served in the armies of the Crown; however, the origins of the modern corps, along with those of the Royal Artillery, lie in the Board of Ordnance established in the 15th century. In Woolwich in 1716, the Board formed the Roy ...
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Leonard Darwin
Leonard Darwin (15 January 1850 – 26 March 1943) was an English politician, economist and eugenicist. He was a son of the naturalist Charles Darwin, and also a mentor to Ronald Fisher, a statistician and evolutionary biologist. Biography Leonard Darwin was born in 1850 at Down House, Kent, into the wealthy Darwin–Wedgwood family. He was the fourth son and eighth child of the naturalist Charles Darwin and his wife Emma Wedgwood, and the last of Darwin's immediate offspring to die. He considered himself the least intelligent of their children – brothers Frank, George and Horace were all elected Fellows of the Royal Society. He was sent to Clapham School in 1862. Darwin joined the Royal Engineers in 1871. Between 1877 and 1882 he worked for the Intelligence Division of the Ministry of War. He went on several scientific expeditions, including those to observe the Transit of Venus in 1874 and 1882. In 1890, Darwin was promoted to the rank of major, but soon left the army an ...
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Horace Darwin
Sir Horace Darwin, (13 May 1851 – 22 September 1928), was an English engineer specializing in the design and manufacture of precision scientific instruments. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Personal life and education Darwin was born in Down House in 1851, the fifth son and ninth child of the British naturalist Charles Darwin and his wife Emma Darwin, Emma, and the youngest of their seven children who survived to adulthood. He was educated at a private school in Woodbridge, Suffolk, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1874. In January 1880 Darwin and Ida Darwin, Emma Cecilia "Ida" Farrer married. She was the daughter of Thomas Farrer, 1st Baron Farrer and was styled Lady Ida Darwin after her marriage. They had one son and two daughters: * Erasmus Darwin IV (7 December 1881 – 24 April 1915) was killed in the Second Battle of Ypres during the First World War. * Ruth Darwin, Ruth Frances Darwin (1883–1972), married Dr. William Re ...
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Cambridgeshire Regiment
The Cambridgeshire Regiment was an infantry regiment of the British Army, and was part of the Territorial Army. Originating in units of rifle volunteers formed in 1860, the regiment served in the Second Anglo-Boer War and the First and Second World Wars before losing its separate identity in 1961. Its lineage is continued today by the Royal Anglian Regiment. The regiment and men are often referred to as the Fen Tigers. Formation The regiment had its origins in the rifle volunteer corps formed in Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely during 1859-60. By 1862 there were ten companies and this soon led to the creation of the 1st Administrative Battalion of Cambridgeshire Rifle Volunteers in 1863. By 1880 the volunteer units in the county had amalgamated as the battalion-size 1st Cambridgeshire Rifle Volunteer Corps. In the following year, as part of the Childers Reforms, the 1st Cambridgeshire RVC were nominated as a volunteer battalion of the Suffolk Regiment. In 1887 the unit was re ...
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Physiologist
Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical and physical functions in a living system. According to the classes of organisms, the field can be divided into medical physiology, animal physiology, plant physiology, cell physiology, and comparative physiology. Central to physiological functioning are biophysical and biochemical processes, homeostatic control mechanisms, and communication between cells. ''Physiological state'' is the condition of normal function. In contrast, '' pathological state'' refers to abnormal conditions, including human diseases. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for exceptional scientific achievements in physiology related to the field of medicine. Foundations Cells Although there are d ...
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Whale Island, Hampshire
Whale Island is a small island in Portsmouth Harbour, close by Portsea Island. It is home to HMS ''Excellent'', the oldest shore training establishment within the Royal Navy, and the location of the Navy Command Headquarters. The island is linked to Portsea Island and thence to the mainland by road bridges. Early history Ordnance Survey maps of Portsmouth Harbour from 1862 show Whale Island as a narrow strip: its east-to-west dimensions were similar to present times, but north to south it measured only tens of yards. To its northwest was Little Whale Island.Maps, documents and photographs on display in the Quarterdeck building, HMS Excellent. Modern Whale Island is predominantly reclaimed land, using the deposits dredged from Portsmouth harbour during the 19th century, increasing the land area by about 125%. It was constructed with the help of the many prisoners taken in the Napoleonic Wars. Expansion During 1867 a viaduct was constructed from the north wall of the dockya ...
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Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. He was a Liberal Party politician from Wales, known for leading the United Kingdom during the First World War, social reform policies including the National Insurance Act 1911, his role in the Paris Peace Conference, and negotiating the establishment of the Irish Free State. Early in his career, he was known for the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales and support of Welsh devolution. He was the last Liberal Party prime minister; the party fell into third party status shortly after the end of his premiership. Lloyd George was born on 17 January 1863 in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, to Welsh parents. From around three months of age he was raised in Pembrokeshire and Llanystumdwy, Caernarfonshire, speaking Welsh. His father, a schoolmaster, died in 1864, and David was raised by his mother and her shoemaker brothe ...
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HMS Excellent (shore Establishment)
HMS ''Excellent'' is a Royal Navy " stone frigate" (shore establishment) sited on Whale Island near Portsmouth in Hampshire. HMS ''Excellent'' is itself part of the Maritime Warfare School, with a headquarters at HMS ''Collingwood'', although a number of lodger units are resident within the site, the principal of which is the headquarters of Fleet Commander ( Navy Command Headquarters). History RN Gunnery School afloat In the 1829 a Commander George Smith advocated the establishment of a Naval School of Gunnery; accordingly, the following year, the third-rate HMS ''Excellent'' was converted into a training ship and moored just north of Portsmouth Dockyard, opposite Fareham Creek. Smith was given oversight and set up ''Excellent'' not only as a training establishment but also as a platform for experimental firing of new weapons (the creek was used as a firing range). In 1832 Smith was replaced in command by Captain Thomas Hastings, under whom the school grew both numeric ...
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Teddington
Teddington is a suburb in south-west London in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. In 2021, Teddington was named as the best place to live in London by ''The Sunday Times''. Historically in Middlesex, Teddington is situated on a long meander of the Thames between Hampton Wick and Strawberry Hill, Twickenham. Mostly residential, it stretches from the river to Bushy Park with a long high street of shops, restaurants and pubs. There is a suspension bridge over the lowest non-tidal lock on the Thames, Teddington Lock. At Teddington's centre is a mid-rise urban development, containing offices and apartments. Economy Teddington is bisected by an almost continuous road of shops, offices and other facilities running from the river to Bushy Park. There are two clusters of offices on this route; on the edge of Bushy Park the National Physical Laboratory, National Measurement Office and LGC form a scientific centre. Around Teddington station and the town centre are a numb ...
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