Robert Watson-Watt

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Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt (13 April 1892 – 5 December 1973) was a Scottish radio engineer and pioneer of radio direction finding and radar technology. Watson-Watt began his career in radio physics with a job at the Meteorological Office, where he began looking for accurate ways to track thunderstorms using the radio waves given off by lightning. This led to the 1920s development of a system later known as high-frequency direction finding (HFDF or "huff-duff"). Although well publicized, the system's enormous military potential was not developed until the late 1930s. Huff-duff allowed operators to determine the location of an enemy radio transmitter in seconds and it became a major part of the network of systems that helped defeat the threat of German U-boats during World War II. It is estimated that huff-duff was used in about a quarter of all attacks on U-boats. In 1935, Watson-Watt was asked to comment on reports of a German death ray based on radio. Watt and his assistant Arnold...

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