Check out the Events page to see when and where we are meeting next and where we will be supporting the community.
Please contact us if would like to know more by emailing secretary@mraths.org.uk.
Check out the Events page to see when and where we are meeting next and where we will be supporting the community.
Please contact us if would like to know more by emailing secretary@mraths.org.uk.
I have a photo of my father with the generator at Pickersleigh Listening Post
Hello Mike,
We would love to see your photograph. If you could scan it and send it to ‘help@mraths.org.uk’ that would be great.
Otherwise do pop into our museum at Great Malvern Station when it re-opens in April.
Hello MRATHS
My late father N P Robinson worked as a Scientific Officer at TRE/RRE Malvern 1950-1957, before moving into the commercial sector with Armstrong Whitworth / Cossor / Elliot / GEC Marconi. He was a Cambridge MA (Natural Science) and had previously served as a RAF RADAR officer in WW2. One of his contemporaries and friends at RRE was W L (Mac) McLachlan.
I have fond memories of the annual staff children’s parties at RRE during the mid-1950s.
Please let me know if you would like any further information
Regards
Andy Robinson
Hello Andy,
Thank you for posting this. We would love to hear your memories and perhaps you would like to post your father’s service on our web site? Look for the Tab marked Malvern Connections. This will lead you to a form to submit.
If you have any memorabilia that you’d like to share pop into our museum when we open again in April. Opening times can be found on Facebook under “The Technology Station”.
Does MRATHS hold films made by the TRE Film Unit? I’m looking for films made during the Second World War.
Richard,
I have replied to you via our ticket system, but the short answer is no originals sadly. They all went to the IWM.
The Late Gordon Joyce, November 2025
Worked with Don Hurle in M- and KF block of RSRE in 1970s and ’80s, with 2 other Gordon’s; the late Gordon Rae and the late Gordon Wilson. At that time the bulk crystal growth of IIIV Compound semiconductors demanded an automatic diameter control system to improve crystal quality and reduce waste in the process of manufacturing constant diameter wafers for device manufacture. The standard automatic diameter control system in silicon crystal growth used a light beam to detect movement of the crystal-melt meniscus, but this could not be applied in the crystal growth of IIIV semiconductors such as gallium arsenide and indium phosphide. Instead a system was developed to sense the weight of the growing crystal to control the crystal growth parameters.
The technique was subsequently exploited in industry and helped the Materials Division win a Queens Award for Technology in 1979.
I work for the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), the successor of the RRE and also collect medals to those who worked at defence research establishments. One of my men, Joseph Scrivener, worked at the then Radar Research and Development Establishment from 1943-1946, going on to receive the Imperial Service Medal as a Senior Scientific Assistant of the Signals Research and Development Establishment. Separately, I acquired this badge/emblem because I had never seen anything similar. Can anyone confirm that the RRDE attribution is correct and what this might have been used for?
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/376653701428
Hello Peter, Thank you for your enquiry. As you know our archive manager has been in touch and we look forward to working together.
Mike
Hello Peter,
I believe the Imperial Service medal is awarded for long service to industrial grades. The image you provided confirms his service at ADRDE, later renamed RRDE.
In my time helping to run the Electronics Restoration Trust with Tony Waller, we amassed a wealth of wartime documents relating to TRE and the equipment it produced. I have it all on file as soft copy. I would now very much like it to find a safe home with MRATHS. If someone can get in touch with me as to where to uploade material that would be great.
Thank you Richard. I will contact you privately to discuss your kind offer.
I have four of the old MIT Rad. Lab. books and (more important) a copy of Doc. Harvey’s
‘Thermionic Tubes’ 1941 marked SECRET (presumably) because it had details of the
magnetron. They were rescued when the library was ‘shrunk’. Would they be of any interest to the society? Cheers
Mike Hamer
Thanks Mike. Your donation will fill a gap in our collection. We will be in touch to arrange the transfer.
Can you provide any information on a Seargent F L Corben who worked for the Air Ministry in 1943 and was stationed in Malvern.
Kind Regards
Thanks for your enquiry Tony,
Unfortunately we do not hold any service records. We do keep civilian staff records mostly via orgnisation charts.
I will check with a colleague in case he served at RAF Defford.
Hi All,
I am not sure if I can attend Hugh’s funeral on Wednesday.
I will do my best to try and attend.
It is very sad to here that he has died.
I was one of the people that started MRATHS.
I donated several physical items to Hugh’s collection in what was then ‘P’ Block.
Among my donated items were :
A Russian SAM7 missile head – in a heavy card board tube.
A Blowpipe guidance head.
The first UK CCD TV camera, 100 x 100 pixels!
What has now happened to those items since Hugh became ill?
Surprisingly, only Apprentice models from other establishments, other than Malvern
were in the collection.
Worcester & District Model Engineers can certify any models, and then run them. We may be able to store items.
I was never in the same business area as Hugh.
However, we worked together on a lot of different projects.
The Falklands War analysis was the main one.
We jointly produced a PowerPoint presentation, that has since been widely used since.
Dave
Hi Dave,
I can’t confirm that we have those items in the collection but we will check.
It would be good to catch-up and explore running some of the apprentice models. A day of steaming!
Mike
I would like to buy a copy of ‘Most Secret’ please
Hello Chris,
If you are local to Malvern, the Malvern Cooperative Bookshop has copies. The book is their best seller.
If not watch out our online bookshop should be open soon. We will announce it on our web site!
Mike
It was great to see Mike Burstow on ‘Bargain Hunt’ today (a repeat, I think) – it was Mike who recruited me to DERA in 1995. I’d like to know of any further Zoom events that you might be planning.
Hello Jim,
Mike is well and doing a sterling ‘chair’ job of keeping the society active and progressing in its objectives in these these difficult times. MRATHS intends to keep in touch with the membership by a continuing series of Zoom meetings. You can keep in touch with future meetings simply by monitoring the MRATHS website. Four meetings extending through to November have been posted very recently. Until we can return to the distantly remembered physical meetings, meetings will be on Zoom.
Regards,
Ron Henry
I am booking secretary for Malvern Civic Society. We have several members who have requested we a include a talk in our forthcoming programme about MRATH’s work on
chrystals, linear accellerators, and such like.
Clearly we are not currently able to meet in a physical sense at this time so we have embarked on holding zoom meetings.
Is there anyone you could suggest who would be prepared to give us a talk either in person or by zoom?
Hello Mr Seddon,
I’ve been asked to reply to your long outstanding question about MRATHS specialist speakers. Firstly, please accept my apologies for the delay.
There is, of course, a huge variety of specialised knowledge and experience spread across those members who worked at RRE/RSRE and its successors; one big problem in disseminating the information is that not all of them welcome the opportunity of being a public speaker! There is also no MRATHS member register of ‘who worked on what?’ so it is not easily known who to approach as a possible speaker.
You specifically mentioned linear accelerators and crystals as possible topics. Way back in the establishment’s history when it was TRE it had one Division which worked on atomic energy, and linear accelerators and synchrotrons were its specialised topics. This work started in 1945. On moving into the postwar era, the government logically decided to centralise all of its civil atomic energy work and established the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) at Harwell on 1-1-1946. By 1948, Malvern’s atomic work had been relocated to there. A talk on crystals might be a possibility. I will ‘put the word out’.
Regards,
Ron Henry
For Mike Burstow:-
Very pleased to see you on today’s ‘Bargain Hunt’ programme. I would love to meet up with you one day to see all photos and documents you have there at Malvern. This is because my father, Donald Fry, is in that photo of the Sunday Soviet shown on the wall in the room where you were being interviewed with Anita Manning. He was the youngest member of those select people at the meeting for which I possess an original photo and another of a TRE team of a year or two later. I actually met a number of the scientists in the latter photo who went on to become some of the leading scientists in the world – one of whom later was a big cog in setting up the CERN establishment in Geneva where the Hadron Colider is located. After the war TRE was well-known for particle accelerators and synchlotrons. Regards, Peter Fry.
Dear Peter,
Delighted to learn more from you about your father. A scan of any records would also be of great value to us. I believe it might be Sir John Adams that you are thinking of in connection with CERN. He was indeed a TRE man. I will contact you separately by email.
Thank you for getting in touch,
Mike
Re Fred Linsey. He returned to the Cavendish. I have a ‘group photo’ from 1952 which includes him. Experimental Physics classes were then run by Dr Schoenberg and Dr Pippard (notable scientists) with the full-time attention of Fred Linsey, in a white coat, who was probably a ‘demonstrator’ or a ‘laboratory technician’. Let me know if this is of interest.
Hi – doing some research for a family member. Mrs Dorothy Hobbs’ cousin, Fred Linsey, worked on (we think) radar at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge in the 1930’s. During the war, he was posted to the Malvern area so the link with TRE is possible. I’ve looked on the staff list from March 1942 but his posting may have been later. He was allocated a car and petrol ration.
Mrs Hobbs would love to hear anything about her cousin. Many thanks.
Further to the comments on the Taylor / Bradshaw breakthrough mentioned on your website, you might like to hear that the Science Museum have stated that although the US circuit is now on display at the Museum, the UK item is not (they’re still looking for it, I shall add). Bradshaw’s son, Martin, was a former friend of mine – I met buttoned-up George, too – and once showed me an article on the Taylor / Bradshaw events taken from a journal entitled ‘Electron’. Interesting to see, btw, how the UK powers-that-be spectacularly failed our lads, yet again …