Chapter 4 Chapter two

In 1912, my father joined Marconi after graduating from university.In the beginning, he was just an engineer, studying how to improve the method of listening to radio signals.Working with Captain Round, he successfully improved a vacuum receiver that made it possible for the first time to monitor communications at a distance. Two days before the outbreak of World War I, he was tinkering with one of these receivers in the old Marconi laboratory on Chelmsford Hall Street when he suddenly realized he was receiving a signal from the German Navy.He reported the harvest to Andre Gray, Marconi's product manager and a close friend of Chief of Naval Intelligence Reggie Hall.

During the First World War, Hall was an important figure in the British Intelligence Agency. He was responsible for the German code-breaking work in the famous Room 40 of the Admiralty.He arranged for my father to ride on the front rung of a special train to Liverpool Street Station.After reading the signal materials sent by his father, he insisted that the Marconi Company let his father come out to build a listening system and a direction-finding station for the Navy. When the First World War broke out, the main problem facing naval intelligence was how to detect the activities of the German High Seas Fleet in time to help the British fleet based at Scapa Flow intercept.Naval Intelligence knew that the German fleet was anchored east of the Kiel Canal when it was not on duty.Hall believed that when the German fleet passed through the Kiel Canal to the North Sea, it was entirely possible for the British to monitor the radio communications of the admiral on the flagship.

So my father started this research work.He devoted himself to designing a highly sensitive device, which was finally improved into a "non-periodic" direction finder.This direction finder can accurately identify the desired signal and azimuth from the messy interference signals.It took several more years before this device was put into use and became an important weapon against German U-boats.To date, all direction finders have been aperiodic. In 1915, before the direction-finding device was fully put into use, his father suggested to Hall that the best way was to find a place in Christiania (now Oslo, Norway) to build a direction-finding device. To the station.Norway was a neutral country at the time, but the British embassy could not be relied on for fear of alarming the Germans.So Hall asked his father if he would go to Norway to secretly command such a direction-finding station for MI6.A few days later, my father left for Norway, posing as a commercial traveler in the pesticide business.He took up residence in a hotel on a quiet street in Christiania, renting a loft to install the direction finder so as not to attract attention.

The embassy's MI6 liaison post provided my father with communications equipment and accessories.But it was a risky job, and his radio equipment meant that he would expose himself.He is not a diplomat, and if someone finds out, the British embassy will categorically deny any contact with him.If things go well, he will live a life behind bars until the end of the war; if things go wrong, he will attract the attention of German intelligence. The direction-finding station worked smoothly for six months, providing the Navy with valuable early warning of the German fleet's intentions.One morning, coming down to breakfast, he was sitting at his permanent table when he came across a new notice posted on the wall across the street bearing his picture and offering a reward for his arrest.

Before the work on the direction-finding station started, my father had already drawn up an escape route with MI6 after the accident.He ate breakfast carelessly, went back to his room, carefully packed the radio into a box, and hid it under the bed.He packed his travel papers, passport, and Navy ID, then left a wad of cash at the house, hoping to bribe the innkeeper not to turn on him. The Norwegian authorities decided that my father would escape by the road leading to the Swedish coast, so instead of taking that route, he fled south-west.After walking ten miles along the coast, he sat down on a stone by the road to rest.After a while, a British naval lieutenant came up to him and asked who he was.The father revealed his identity, and the lieutenant took him aboard a motorboat.The launch took him to a British destroyer which was waiting there in advance.

Many years later, when I was about to retire, I tried to find details of my father's activities in MI6 files.After consulting with the then Chief of MI6, Maurice Oldfield, I spent a day looking for these documents in their file register, but I found nothing. Years ago, it was destroyed by the liquidators of the Sixth Office according to the usual practice. I was born in Chesterfield in 1916 in my grandmother's house.My father worked for MI6 in Norway, and my mother had to live with my grandmother.I was born prematurely one night when German Zeppelins bombed nearby Sheffield.Because it was a time of war, the pressure on the hospital was very high, and there were no vacant beds at all.My mother had to improvise a simple premature baby incubator with some glass jars containing chemicals and a few hot water bottles, so that my weak life can survive.

After World War I, my father returned to the Marconi company.He became an asset to the company and became director of research.Our family moved to live in a big house by the sea near Frington.But the good times didn't last long, and soon moved to another house in the suburbs of Chelmsford.The house resembled an abandoned radio factory, with various radio equipment in varying degrees of damage hidden in every corner, as well as tin boxes full of wiring.My father was passionate, irritable, and impulsive, more an artist than an engineer.For as long as I can remember he used to take me out into the garden, or into the open fields on the Essex seashore, and explain to me the mysteries of radio.He would spend hours at a time explaining the concept of tubes and transistors, and showing me how to deftly fiddle with the tuning dials of a radio so that random static can instantly turn into a clear signal.He also taught me how to do my own experiments.I remember the look of pride on my father's face whenever I showed my poor technique to our family's guests, Sir Archie Eddington, J. J. Thomas, and others.

After World War I, MI6 maintained close ties with the Marconi Corporation, as did my father.The Marconi company has a large marine ship department, which is responsible for equipping various ships with radio equipment and staff, and provides perfect cover for MI6. They sent a staff member to a ship through their father. As a radio operator on the ship, the ship is going to a place of interest to them. Admiral Hall was a frequent visitor to my house at the time.As soon as he came, he slipped into the glass greenhouse with his father, and stayed for hours, talking privately about some new invention.Father also knew Colonel Mansfield Cumming, the first director of MI6.His father greatly admired his courage and technical ability.He also knew Colonel Vernon Kyle, the founder of MI5.His father didn't know him very well, and even hated him a little.Like supporting either Oxford or Cambridge, both MI5 and MI6 had their pros and cons, and my father was undoubtedly in favor of MI6.

In the twenties, the Marconi Company was one of the most desirable places for scientists.People refer to Marconi as "Jim" for short, because it has concentrated many outstanding talents in the world, has great foresight in investment, and has a grand vision.Its greatest achievement was the creation of the first short-wave radio directional system, which laid the foundation for modern communications.Like so many other British achievements, this invention was carried out with many twists and turns and against the opposition of the British government and the scientific authorities of the time.

Before the First World War, Britain decided to develop a long-wave radio system to replace the cable system as a means of communication with various parts of the empire.This decision was sidelined by the war.But Marconi believes that it is entirely possible to design a directional transmission system to transmit short-wave radio to very long distances.This system can transmit larger traffic at higher speeds.Despite the wartime advances in Marconi's radio technology, in 1922 his vision was ridiculed by the Royal Commission as "amateur science".One commissioner even summed it up as "a short-lived craft."

This was challenged by the Marconi Corporation, which undertook the construction of trans-world lines pro bono, urging the British government to suspend long-wave research work until the directional emission short-wave system had passed the test phase, and that, should the tests be successful, the government must Put the system into use.The government agreed, and a contract was drawn up.It is very difficult to fulfill the content of this contract.They demanded a Grimsby-Sydney line, at two hundred and fifty words per minute for twelve consecutive hours, and a consumption of no more than twenty kilowatts.They require the line to be operational within a year. These technical indicators are daunting.At that time, radio technology was still in its infancy, and few people knew how to transmit radio waves with a stable frequency.This project would not have been possible without the efforts of Marconi's technical team.This technical cadre consisted of my father, Captain Round, and C. S. Franklin.Marconi had a knack for finding and using talent, and he was able to spot self-taught scientists of extraordinary talent, such as Franklin.He used to earn a few shillings a week doing odd jobs like decorative arc lamps in a factory in Ipswich.After joining the Marconi Company, within a few years, he has become a unique backbone in technology. The suggestion of the Grimsby-Sydney line caused an uproar throughout the telecommunications industry and others.My father often mentioned in later years that, just as the project was at its peak, he and RCA boss David Sarnoff were walking down Broadway, and Sarnoff asked: " Is Marconi probably crazy? This project will bankrupt him forever." The father replied, "Jim and Franklin think it will work." "If it works, I can have you kick my ass all the way down Broadway." Three months later, the line was put into use within the stipulated time according to the contract.It worked twelve hours a day, sent three hundred and fifty characters per minute, and worked continuously for seven days.In my opinion, this is one of the great technological achievements of this century.Dad's only regret was that he didn't get the chance to kick Sarnoff's ass all the way down Broadway. My teenage years were spent in this incredibly exciting atmosphere.I am weak from congenital deficiency, and disease has made me suffer.I developed rickets and had to wear iron leggings until I was a teenager.But it wasn't all a bad thing. When my father was home, he picked me up from school almost every day and drove me to his lab.There I would spend hours watching my father and his assistants work on the Grimsby-Sydney line.This incident taught me a vivid lesson that I will never forget, that is: on major issues, experts often make mistakes. The Thirties showed a bright future for our Wright family.We are totally oblivious to the economic crisis that is spreading around the world.I was at Bishop's Stortford College - a small but independent college.I excelled in college and was free from the illnesses that had plagued me since childhood.In 1931, I completed all the credits for all my courses, received my graduation certificate, and returned home for the summer vacation.Next term, I'm going to university and I hope to get a scholarship at Oxford or Cambridge. A week later, my wonderful world was completely gone.Dad came back one night and told us he and Franklin had been fired.It was several days later that he reluctantly tried to explain why to us.It was years later that I realized what had happened. In the late 1920s, Marconi merged with several cable companies, believing that only this kind of mutual cooperation could win the necessary funds for the radio business to ensure the advent of this major worldwide means of communication.As the economic downturn deepened, the cable industry was increasingly threatened by the rise of wireless.The cable companies ruled alone in the new merged company, and funding for radio research and the installation of new systems was slashed.Marconi himself retired to Italy due to old age and sickness.None of his persuasion and intervention can make the newly appointed managers change their original intentions.My dad, Franklin, and many other key technical people were fired.For the next ten years, long-distance radio communications remained largely deserted.Our family's life has also fallen into misery. In just a few months, my father was a different man.He drank heavily and was unable to support his two sons in school.Due to my older age and my high school diploma, of course I had to drop out of school.This incident caused me to suffer great mental and spiritual trauma, and the shadow of the disease reappeared in my life.I suffer from a chronic stutter that sometimes leaves me completely speechless.In one short summer vacation, I went from a promising student to a young man with little prospect. The decision to drop me out of school, and the consequences it had on my health, made my father feel terribly guilty, and his alcoholism was exacerbated.The mother tried her best to persuade and comfort him, but it always backfired, so that she gradually felt helpless and isolated.The only visitors to our house were the nurses who had been brought in to stop my father from gawking at Scotch. A few years later, I began investigating for MI5 a group of well-known Englishmen who were fascinated by communism in the 1930s.I can't help thinking back to that part of my life.I didn't have the privileges and educational opportunities they had, my family was torn apart by the vagaries of capitalism, and I experienced firsthand the consequences of depression and depression.However, because they were spies, I was the hunter and they were the prey. In a sense, the answer is simple.In 1932, I was fifteen years old, I had no qualifications and needed a job.I don't have time for political philosophy.I placed an advertisement for employment in the personnel advertisements section of The Times.The first person to answer me was a woman named Margaret Leigh.She ran a farm known as "Achinada Roach" in Pnocton, near Westeros, Scotland.I became a worker on her farm with no wages but only board and lodging.Scotland has rolling hills and endless sky. Nature relieved me from confusion and quietly melted the pain of the past into this warm and harmonious life. I found the greatest love in my life — Farming. Margaret Leigh was an idealist.She wants to turn her farm into a training base for children from the slums of London, so that they can become managers of various farms in the future.But later facts proved that her idea could not be realized.She decided to abandon the idea and planned to write a book about life on the Archinada Roach farm.During the day she wrote and I tended the farm; at night, when I was done with everything, she made me sit down and read aloud to her what she had written during the day, and my chronic stuttering gradually healed.The book was finally published. The title of the book was "Highland Home Weaving", and it was a great success. In the spring of 1935, the landlord wanted to increase the land tax on Achinada Roach Farm, and we were kicked out of the farm because we couldn't pay the land tax.We had to move to a farm in Cornwall, where the rent was cheaper and life was the same as before.I am ambitious to become an agricultural scientist specializing in food production processes, but due to interruptions in my previous education, I am not eligible to apply for a scholarship.Grants were not yet fashionable in the 1930s.Later, Margaret gave me a little help. Relying on my cleverness in the business of selling piglets, and my family's relationship with the dean of St. Peter's College, Oxford University, I managed to raise enough money to study at the School of Agricultural Economics. .I married my wife Lois in 1938, a year after I moved to Oxford.At this time, rumors about the war were everywhere, and we, like most other young people, had a premonition that the good times would not last long, and it seemed that we would inevitably lead a life of displacement and turmoil. During my time at Oxford, my father began to make up for the losses of the past six years due to his alcoholism.At his mother's urging, he returned to work at Marconi, but only as a consultant.I think it was the premonition of impending war that made him suddenly wake up, and he was eager to serve his country, so he couldn't wait to get in touch with Sir Frederick Brundett in the Naval Scientific Office.Brundritt told him bluntly that finding a higher-level job was out of the question because of his bad reputation for drinking.Brundritt put him on trial as an ordinary technician for a while.Father agreed.I admired my father's dedication very much. He gave up half of his income as a consultant in Marconi's company, and he was willing to work in front of the laboratory bench with young scientists who were twenty years younger than him.He never cared that he had been director of research at Marconi.In a sense, I think he was eager to redeem what was lost in the past, convinced that war was going to break out, and everyone had a responsibility to do their part for the country. Father's career flourished again due to his extensive experience in observing space.Soon he was assigned to be responsible for the technical development of the "Y" monitor. "Y" monitoring was the tactical monitoring of German communications.He was later appointed Chief Scientist of the British Admiralty's Signal Corps, and returned to the "Great Game" to find the golden world of his youth.In 1943, he was tasked with developing a signal plan for the Allied invasion of Normandy.This is a large and tedious task.After work every day, he always fiddles with the radio, listens to the click of Morse code, records the operation status, and analyzes it for reference the next day.He hunched over, earphones on his head, intent on unraveling the mysteries of this electronic world.I often think that this is his moment of bliss. When the war broke out, classes at my agricultural economics college were suspended.My advisor, Scott Watson, became the Chief Scientist of the Department of Agriculture.With most of the teaching staff, he took on an extremely important task-to prepare food supplies for the country.At this time, I was the only one in my family who failed to serve a country at war.My brother went to work at ELEL, and my sister was a eavesdropper for Wiens Corporation (she later worked with Jones in Signals Intelligence and later married Robert Sutton, ELEL director).I wrote to Brundritt, hoping that he would assist me in finding me a place in the Admiralty.It never occurred to me that he would send a telegram inviting me to his office for a talk. Brundritt has known me for several years.He was a very good farmer who had successfully bred Frisian cattle.He was intrigued by my time at the Archinada Roach Farm.He asked me what I could do in the Admiralty.I explained to him that I had observed my father's work for several years, giving me a solid foundation in electronics knowledge comparable to that of an undergraduate at a university.In just ten minutes, he promised me to work at the Admiralty Research Laboratory the following week. The group I belonged to at the Admiralty Research Laboratory was headed by Stephen Butterworth.He has great organizational skills.Everyone called him "Sam" for some reason.He was a tall, thin man with tousled black hair who smoked his pipe constantly.He worked like crazy, very hard.He organized around him a group of capable young scientists, including Macy, Gunn, Wigglesworth, Bates and Crick.Due to my junior qualifications, I felt a sense of insecurity working in this lab, so I studied like hell.Every night I sat alone at the kitchen table in our Hampton Wick apartment, studying advanced physics through the night while German bombs blared around the apartment.Butterworth always encouraged me.His weakness is also his greatest potential: he has always worked in obscurity and let others talk about it.At the end of the war, his reward for his brilliance and all he had done in silence was a worthless Imperial Order. The contribution of the Naval Research Laboratories to winning the war has been completely ignored.When the war first broke out, the threat posed by magnetic mines was one of Britain's most vexing problems.The Naval Laboratories have embarked on the development of a degaussing system to neutralize the magnetic fields of our ships before their combat effectiveness is compromised.In 1940, without a really effective degaussing system, our combat capability was very problematic. For example, the Germans planted thousands of magnetic mines in the shallow waters off the coast of Dunkirk.Hitler firmly believed that these mines could make the great retreat of British troops impossible.Butterworth knew that German mines would only explode when they hit a magnetic field with the magnetic north pole pointing down. He suggested that the magnetic field of our ships should be changed to a magnetic south pole pointing down. open it.So the British Admiralty embarked on a huge magnetic field conversion project, and all ships going to Dunkirk had to carry out this magnetic field conversion.It turned out that none of the ships were damaged by mines. In the turmoil of war, there is no choice but to allow young people to use their brains fully.After the evacuation of Duntanrk, Ray Gorski, another scientist who worked in the Admiralty Research Laboratory, and I were ordered to demagnetize the battleship "Prince of Wales".The battleship was moored in Rosyth's dry dock, and its next voyage was to take Winston Churchill to the Atlantic Conference to meet with Roosevelt.It was built by a shipyard in Belfast.Its magnetic field is around the hull, not from bow to stern.The original degaussing method failed.It is extremely unsafe to go to sea according to the current situation. Gorski and I devised a makeshift improvised system to cancel the magnetic field across the centerline of the hull.Use a huge coil to wind the hull, and then connect it to the submarine's battery to charge it, so that a magnetic field can be generated to offset the original magnetic field on the ship.The work took several days and involved everyone on board.We saw hundreds of people in the Rosyth Dry Dock moving in unison to our orders, even though we were just teenage boys in our twenties. Science during the war is often adapted to local conditions and simplified in this way. You can do whatever you think is best.The sense of urgency of the war does not allow you to do ten to fifteen years of preparation in advance, if that is the case, it may be too late to start.The war forged my ability to deal with technical intelligence in the future, taught me the value of "simple and simple", and at the same time let me understand how efficient the work will be as long as the staff obeys the command of young people who pay attention to practical and creative science .Sadly, at the end of the war, this attitude disappeared altogether, and various committees, with their death hand, stifled the vitality and threw it out of England. In 1942, I began to develop the first anti-mini submarine detection system.This system successfully protected the harbor during the torch landings in North Africa and the subsequent landings in Northwest Europe.This led to my involvement in the planning of an operation to sink the German battleship Tippitz.This warship is anchored in Aldenfjord Bay, posing a threat to British ships anytime and anywhere.We hatched a plan to take it out with a pocket submarine.The Germans used submarine detectors to protect Ardenfjord Bay.Consisting of sets of coils laid out on the seafloor, this detector measures the magnetic flux of passing ships on a principle similar to those systems I developed at the Naval Research Laboratory.I was therefore called upon to try and degauss our X-boats so that they could slip into Ardenfjord Bay undetected by the Germans. Submarine degaussing technology is far more complicated than ordinary ship degaussing technology.Finally, I found that if an electromagnet was placed on the submarine and a certain amount of current was passed through it, it could be used as a compensating system to counteract the changes in the magnetic field caused by the pocket submarine entering the area.At the same time, I calculated that if the X-boat entered Ardenfjord Bay in the presence of a magnetic storm, the probability of being detected by the enemy would be reduced by ten to one hundred times.I visited the Magnetic Anomaly Observatory at Eskderimir for this purpose, and knowing that they had a high probability of predicting a magnetic storm of sufficient magnitude, I submitted my findings to the Admiralty. In 1944, under the cover of a magnetic storm, the degaussed British X-type submarine sailed into Aldenfjord Bay. The officers and soldiers were very brave and managed to plant explosives on the "Tippitz", causing the ship to be destroyed. When it was destroyed, it completely lost its combat effectiveness.The day's feat earned them three Victoria Crosses.But bravery is nothing without the technical assistance of the Naval Research Laboratory. When the war was over, I couldn't change my career anymore, and although my favorite career was farming, it was all doomed that I would never be able to relive that dream of nature.I had to take the post-war science civil service examination, and the examiner's name was Snow.This examination is specially held to select the best scientists from among the hundreds of people who have been recruited.I tied for first place with another person with 290 points (out of 300 points).Butterworth congratulated me warmly.Those days and nights spent studying at the little table in the kitchen have paid off, though Butterworth deserves much of the credit. In 1946, my father returned to Marconi and served as chief engineer.In the same year, I also started a new life in the Electronics Research Laboratory as Chief Scientific Officer.For the next four years my father and I worked side by side in the same line of work.We didn't mention anything about the exams in the 1930s to each other.In 1949, a phone call from Sir Frederick Brundritt brought me into this new world of MI5.