Archibald Reith Low
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Archibald Reith Low | |
|---|---|
 Aviator's Certificate No.34 | |
| Born | 31 December 1878 Aberdeen, Scotland, UK |
| Died | 21 January 1969 (aged 90) Wimborne, Dorset, England, UK |
| Nationality |  British & later Canadian  |
Archibald "Archie" Reith Low, MA (Cantab) FRAeS (born in Aberdeen on 31 December 1878, died 21 January 1969)[1] was a British pilot and aeronautics pioneer. He is the designer of the Vickers F.B.5. and Vickers E.F.B.1.[2][3]
Ranks
He held the rank of Second Lieutenant in the City of London Imperial Volunteers He held the rank of Acting Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve attached to the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). When on 1 April 1918, the RNAS was merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps to form the Royal Air Force (the world's first independent air force), he held the rank of Major (in the Royal Air Force). He had therefore held a commission in all three services.
Early life
He was one of eight children of his father, a Church of Scotland minister and Jane Stuart Reith, aunt to Lord Reith.[4]
He was educated at Watson's and Edinburgh University, and at Clare College, Cambridge
Career
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1906 | Appointed assistant head designer, and later head designer at Johnson & Phillips Ltd, Charlton, London. |
| 1910 | Employed by the newly formed Bristol Aeroplane Company as test pilot and instructor. |
| 1911 | Appointed chief designer at Vickers in their newly formed Vickers Ltd (Aviation Department). |
| 1919 | Chief Librarian at the Air Ministry. |
| 1932 | Appointed Senior Technical Officer at Orfordness Beacon, which was 'The Birthplace of Radar', where he was known as a 'boffin', a new term at the time for a person engaged in unspecified scientific or technical research, and where he became a lifelong friend of Henry Tizard, who started the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. |
| 1938 | Transferred to the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough Airport, to work in the Directorate of Technical Development, where a second station operating on the same principle as at Orfordness Beacon was set up to provide wider area coverage and allow two-bearing fixes between Orfordness and Farnborough Airport. |
| 1940 | Emigrated to Canada to work at one of the munitions factories there to perfect tracer bullet techniques and then became a scientific adviser to the Canadian Government War Department. |
| 1949 | Retired, aged 71. |
Publications
- Normal Elliptic Functions (University of Toronto Press 1950)
See also
References
- ^ "Archibald Low". britishaviation-ptp.com. Retrieved 15 May 2017.
- ^ Bloor, David (3 October 2011). The Enigma of the Aerofoil: Rival Theories in Aerodynamics, 1909-1930. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226060934.
- ^ Driver, Hugh (1 January 1997). The Birth of Military Aviation: Britain, 1903-1914. Boydell & Brewer Ltd. ISBN 9780861932344.
- ^ Low, R C Edmondston-Low (1 April 1970). "Major A R Low, RAF, MA (Cantab.), FRAeS 1878-1969". The Aeronautical Journal. 74 (712): 337–338. doi:10.1017/S0001924000047679 (inactive 22 January 2020). ISSN 0001-9240.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2020 (link)
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