Monday 22nd April: ‘Science at War – Vorsprung Durch Technik?’ by Phil Judkins
Kelham Island Museum Alma Street, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, 6.30pm
Please note this is a change of talk to that was originally advertised
The Secretary of our Society, Dr Phil Judkins, will be giving this talk for the South Yorkshire Branch of the Newcomen Society. Newcomen South Yorkshire
More information: A ‘technological leap forward’, as in Audi’s slogan ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik?’, was an advance eagerly sought by both Germany and the Allies in the Second World War. In radar, that leap was the huge jump to the use of microwaves, which in a single bound yielded both more precise target location and much smaller aerials to use onboard aircraft, ships and vehicles.
But Germany, a far larger nation than Britain, with many first-rate scientists, did not make this leap; Britain, which did – and which immediately and freely shared its secrets with the USA, almost lost its advantage by a breakdown in relationships between researchers and a key manufacturer.
Dr Phil Judkins’ up-to-the-minute research, conducted jointly with German Professor Helmut Klausing, sweeps away comfortable myths, to set out the whole story with facts previously obscured in both nations, revealing how personalities and power struggles, science and politics, interact in time of war.