Blumlein feature on Radio-4.

[G6Tanuki]

There's a short feature on A.D. Blumlein at the end of Radio 4's 1PM "Today" program - you should be able to get it on whatever the BBC call their "radio player" these days.

[Andrew2]

Thanks, must take a listen. I have a book 'Alan Dower Blumlein, the Inventor of Stereo' (a truly lame title IMO). It's a terrific read. Most of his early work seems to have been concerned with the equalisation of long lines and the perfection of bridge-type measuring equipment. A clever bloke.
Apparently there's a film in the offing - I do hope they don't take the usual cinematic liberties.

[dseymo1]

Originally Posted by Andrew2

...A clever bloke...

Now there's an understatement if ever there was one

[Radio Wrangler]

If it's Hollywood, they'll have the actor playing Blumlein with an american accent, at the controls of the Halifax flying a dog fight against a Ju88 flown by Goering... before bravely flying the thing into the ground to save the magnetron from falling into the wrong hands.

There! we don't need to watch the movie, now.

A loose locknut on a tappet adjuster in a Merlin could never be dramatic enough.

I've always wondered what further things Blumlein would have done if he'd survived the war.

David

[turretslug]

All those what-ifs....

I'm sure he would have wrought artistry and genius with the transistor, and that his name would be truly be a household one.

[Herald1360]

Surely a loose locknut on a tappet adjuster would only drop one cylinder if that. Hardly enough to bring down a four engined bomber with 47 cylinders still firing!

Am I being too literal here?

[turretslug]

It was the knock-ons from dropped inlet valve- backfire and inlet ducting explosion, leading to an uncontained catastrophic fire that rapidly burned through the wing structure. Engine-on-wing fires with intense, stream-blasted blaze near vital aluminium structure give pilots nightmares- Dad flew many multi-engine aircraft, he said that what he most admired about the Boeing company was that they had realised early on that jet engines meant that the xxxx engine could be stood right away from the xxxx wing....

[Radio Wrangler]

It was the perfect example of one of those 'for want of a nail' failure cascades. It was also a perfect example of the value of careful nit-picking accident investigation.

The knock-on effect into the future electronics industry cannot be estimated.

[Nicklyons2]

Re-cycled in the early hours on Radio 5s "Up All Night" with Dotun Adebayo 'chatting' with ADB's grandson basking in his ancestor's achievements without, I suspect, fully understanding them.

Adebayo was, as usual, unresearched & awful. Considering the field in which many of ADB's achievements were made i.e. broadcasting I might have thought a broadcaster might have been a bit more aware and could have asked more intelligent questions about said 'industry'.

Never mind Blumlein died bravely in a crash whilst working on some 'hush-hush' stuff and had developed a 'horn thing' for detecting planes at a distance which apparently turned into radar; all you need to know really.

[Herald1360]

Thanks for explanation, RW, makes sense now of an apparently trivial problem.

[turretslug]

Hindsight 'n' all that, but perhaps someone with authority should have been aware of Blumlein's particular genius and value to the vital field of cutting-edge electronics development and told him that he was strictly to stay on the ground. It seems that his presence on the Halifax that day may have been a little less than official though (I was going to say under the radar...) and also that he wasn't too much of a stickler for rules, anyway.

A couple of well-known, (relatively!) recent cases that illustrate that engine-on-wing fires are liable to be non-trivial and rapidly escalating;

https://aviation-safety.net/database...?id=19950516-0

https://aviation-safety.net/database...?id=19960814-1

[jamesperrett]

This thread has just prompted me to do a little research.

Many years ago - probably more than 30, I was browsing in a record shop in Petersfield, Hampshire when I overheard a conversation between two older gentlemen. In my mind I remembered one of them referring to his father Alan Blumlein while the other talked about being related to (I think) Alan Turing (if it was Turing he must have been a nephew). They were obviously meeting for the first time and talking about their more famous relatives.

Later I though no - I must have imagined this encounter but I just did a bit of searching around and yes, Alan Blumlein's son still lives in Petersfield and actually owned a record shop in the town for a few years (although not the one I was browsing in). I wonder if their more famous relatives ever met?