Scientists - "OK on tap but not on top"
For some odd reason there is a spate of comment about the fat old fraud , wannabe novelist and colossal bore.
Apparently by indentifying the intellectual Luddites in the Civil Service (as Basil F would say - statement of the bleedin' obvious)and identifying 2 Cultures he has reached the status of some 20th Century stooge sage.
Apart from maching my arm ache reaching for my gun when I hear the phrase 2 Cultures it has been evident sinceQueen Victoria died and the little incident in Sarajevo that the Rolls Royce minds of the upper echelons have always regarded scientist like an unpleasant luxury like a water flushing closet.
Which is just as well as even today they are regarded as a sort of uber plumber - or more recently a "techie" to be kept under wraps incase they frihten the horses and run off with the women
We have a lengthy list of scientists / technical geniuses who have been ignored ...
arnes Wallis introduced the concept of economic warfare by estoyin gthe poer supplies from the Ruhr Valley factories.This was a concept to far for the military johnnes who couldn't see why making the Hun paddle around in Wellingtons was such a good idea.
Frank Whittle's Jet engine,the magnetron valve which we simple gave to the US After the war to which scientific efort played such apart (often concealed for decades such as Colossus and Bletchley Park) David Havillland personally financed the first 2 passenger carrying pressurised jetliners which using novel construction techniques - The Comet.
The Ministry of Supply eventually paid up but couldn't really see a market for long distance air travel.
In secrecy a handful of scientists were given unheated huts at Aldermaston to construct a Hydrogen Bomb with virtually nofunds. general GRove with Project Manhattan employed at least 100,000 andat one time was using 10% of the electricity power supply of the US.
After the shambles of the Bikini tests we agred to stop reearch and leav it to the Americanswith the UK acting assubcontractors... TSR2 . Concord (e) (Lord Patel was a member of the Anti Concorde project).
In the early 60's J D Bernal ,crystallographer, physicist and author of the astoundly good "History of Science" (ripped off as a TV series by James Burke for BBC in the 70's and called "Connections"), spoke at Leicester Univesity.
Working a s scientist he was viewed with suspicion as he was an unashamed Communist (he also had many wives and very few of them were his own)and so viewedwith suspicion.
Visited by a pompous Major General Bernal and his team had ben recmmndedby some chappie who may help with problem.
"Map large bodies of water say 0- 12 feet deep" Questions flowed he efused to ask as the matter was the highest secret.
Her arrived a week later irritated to be met by nt ony no solution but a mas of qiesions, was the water , saline is how much?, marine,estuarine, inland etec, etc
His visit became for frequent and he became more iritableand it was evident that he was under imense pressure. Again they presed for more information.
Finally (apparently with the express approval of Churchill)they ee let in on the secret of the NormandyLandings.
Days later they were able to tell him they neededto fly over the coast at High/ Low / mid tide and record the wave patterns.
Using fairly sraighforward forual for interferometry derived from years of careful study of crystallography they woul be able to dive the submarine surface fairly accurately.
The photography was laid on and in a month the most detailed maps were avaiable.
This illustrated the Civil Service principal that scientist ere a resource to be turned off and on at will.
The les from JDB Treasured by Lord Petl ever since is .... "If you want the right answer, you have to ask the right question".
How the destruction of the grammar schools, working class mobility and the closure of University Chemistry and Physics departments was pat of a careful plan - just like Katyn to remove the technical cadres who posed a threat to the power elites and their obedient servants is a tale for another day.
