William Sansome Tucker was a British pioneer in acoustical research. He was born in
KidderminsterKidderminster is a town in the Wyre Forest district of Worcestershire, England. It is located approximately seventeen miles south-west of Birmingham city centre. The 2001 census recorded a population of 55,182 in the town...
, Worcestershire, in 1877, the son of William Tucker, an artist painter, and Anna his wife. William married in
Chorlton-Fictional characters:*The protagonist of Chorlton and the Wheelies, a British children's animated television series...
, Lancashire, in 1906. He lectured on physics in London, and joined the British Army.
In 1916, Corporal W. S. Tucker, of the
Royal EngineersThe Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers , and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army. It provides combat engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces...
, joined Lawrence Bragg to undertake research into 'sound ranging': the process of using microphones and mathematics to determine the position of enemy artillery.
William Sansome Tucker was a British pioneer in acoustical research. He was born in
KidderminsterKidderminster is a town in the Wyre Forest district of Worcestershire, England. It is located approximately seventeen miles south-west of Birmingham city centre. The 2001 census recorded a population of 55,182 in the town...
, Worcestershire, in 1877, the son of William Tucker, an artist painter, and Anna his wife. William married in
Chorlton-Fictional characters:*The protagonist of Chorlton and the Wheelies, a British children's animated television series...
, Lancashire, in 1906. He lectured on physics in London, and joined the British Army.
In 1916, Corporal W. S. Tucker, of the
Royal EngineersThe Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers , and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army. It provides combat engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces...
, joined Lawrence Bragg to undertake research into 'sound ranging': the process of using microphones and mathematics to determine the position of enemy artillery. Bragg had been wracked by doubts and problems with the military command structure. Promoted to lieutenant by June 1916, Tucker formed an experimental sound ranging section, which spearheaded the development of an effective system of '
sound rangingIn land warfare, sound ranging is a method of determining the coordinates of a hostile artillery battery using data derived from the sound of its guns firing...
' enemy guns. Vital to the success was Tucker's invention of a 'hot wire' microphone, capable of identifying the shell sound wave and the following report of the gun that fired it. The break-through had come from Bragg, who found that the water closet at the farmhouse where he was billeted, allowed him, once seated inside, to detect sound and pressure differences of shell waves and gun waves as they passed overhead.
Tucker researched how to cool platinum wire with the air currents caused by the sound-waves they were detecting. Mouse-holes and rum jars provided a clue here, as there were two mouse-holes by Tucker's bed and he noticed a draught of cool air whenever the gun-wave arrived. Tucker devised a microphone consisting of a thin, electrically heated wire, stretched over a small hole in a container (he used rum jars). The decrease in the electrical resistance of the wire as the gun-wave struck was recorded by a galvanometer.
Tucker had to send for platinum wire to be delivered to him at Kemmel Hill, before he could run trials. The rapid oscillations of the shell waves had almost no effect on the wire, whilst the gun-reports resulted in well-defined 'breaks' on the cine film used as a detector, due to the deflection of the wire by the pressure of the gun wave. By September 1916, Tucker's new microphones had been supplied to all sound-ranging sections.
In 1917, sound-ranging was further developed, so that allowances could be made for poor weather conditions. Tucker developed a system of moveable microphones to improve detection techniques, allowing for a high degree of accuracy in determining the position of the enemy guns. By the end of the war it was possible to determine where the gun was pointing, and how large it was.
The technique could also be extended to listen out for enemy aircraft; as a result, Tucker became Director of Acoustical Research, Air Defense Experimental Establishment,
Biggin HillBiggin Hill is a place and electoral ward in the London Borough of Bromley in London, England. It lies on the Bromley to Westerham road , some south of Bromley.-History:...
. His work eventually led to vast parabolic '
sound mirrorsSound Mirrors is the fifth studio album by Coldcut. It was released in January 2006. Four singles were released from the album including the Top 75 hit "True Skool" with Roots Manuva.- CD :#"Man in a Garage"...
' being constructed from concrete. Some of these sound mirrors still survive along England's south coast, such as those to be found at
DengeDenge is a former Royal Air Force site near Dungeness, in Kent, England. It is best known for the early experimental acoustic mirrors which remain there....
, near Dungeness, to the west side of a lake slightly north of
Lydd-on-SeaLydd-on-Sea is a modern village, mostly built after World War II, which consists mainly of bungalows built along the Dungeness coastal road south of Greatstone, Kent, England...
.
Tucker's work led into the development of
RADARRadar is an object detection system that uses electromagnetic waves to identify the range, altitude, direction, or speed of both moving and fixed objects such as aircraft, ships, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The term RADAR was coined in 1941 as an acronym for RAdio Detection And...
, which made sound-ranging using the great concrete mirrors obsolete.