Elliott, William Sydney, 1917-2000

Born 22 April 1917, educated at Deacon's School Peterborough; studied physics at St Catherine's College, Cambridge, began Ph.D at Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge studies halted to joined wartime Air Defence Research and Development Establishment at Christchurch, Hampshire, later Malvern, Worcestershire. During this period he worked on radar systems, developing an interest in pulse-type electronic techniques. Projects included the use of delay lines to cancel out interference of stationary 'clutter' in radar signals, to distinguish a moving target, and subsequently the use of binary digital transducers in electro-mechanical servo systems.

After a period with Powell Duffryn Research Laboratories, 1946-1947, as Chief Physicist Elliott joined Elliott Brothers research Laboratories as Head of the Computing Division. In his curriculum vitae he listed the achievements of this period as shaft-encoding systems, computer-controlled gunnery (axis conversion, data reduction, prediction), analogue and digital computing systems, storage in magnetostriction delay lines in the '401' computer. The '401' prototype was built with the support of the National Research Development Corporation. Completed in April 1953 it was exhibited the same month at the Physical Society Exhibition. It gave many years of good service at the Rothamstead Experimental Station and is now housed in the Science Museum London.

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