Alumni and guests are invited to our next meeting, at the Langton Matravers Village Hall, which is a talk by Dr Phil Judkins, followed by a buffet lunch.

Phil’s original qualification is in classical archaeology, although his PhD is in the history of radar, his first job was at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, and his first published paper was to a NATO Conference in Stresa, Italy, as long ago as 1977. In September, he will be taking up a Beaufort Visiting Fellowship at St John’s where his research will focus on British radar 1935-45. His business career extended over central and local government, high-tech industry and the City of London, and his academic career, following his Doctorate at Cranfield, through Fellowships at the United Kingdom Defence Academy and Leeds and Buckingham Universities, where he has lectured on military cryptography and electronics history. He is the author of four books, including artificial intelligence and the implications of virtual reality, and of numerous academic papers.

His talk today, ‘Making Vision into Power’, will focus upon Cambridge’s contribution to British wartime radar research, from the 1935 suggestion of locating aircraft by reflected radio waves due to St John’s Arnold ‘Skip’ Wilkins, to radar’s triggering the detonation of the atomic bombs which ended the conflict in 1945. Phil’s approach will cover German successes as well as those of Britain and the USA (and an almost-forgotten French contribution), and will comment upon electronics used in Bletchley Park’s cryptography, but he will reserve a special place for the crucial microwave and countermeasures research carried out here at Langton Matravers and nearby Worth. Both British and German equipment from his personal collection will be on display, and Phil warns us to expect many surprises – this will definitely not be the ‘same old’ oft-repeated story!