Patently, she was a genius
QUESTION A blue plaque has just been erected in Portsmouth to Hertha Marks Ayrton, inventor. What did she invent? And was she the first woman member of the Royal Society?
HERTHA MARks AyRTon registered 26 patents for her inventions. These included a carbon arc light for film projection (1913) and a fan to clear poisonous gases from the trenches (1915), with more than 100,000 dispatched to the Western Front during World War I.
Hertha Marks Ayrton was born Phoebe sarah Marks in Portsea, Portsmouth, on April 28, 1854, of Jewish parentage and the third of eight children. As a young girl, she was taught at a school in London owned by her aunt, Marion Harzog.
A child prodigy, she adopted the name Hertha in her teenage years, after the ancient Germanic earth goddess.
she passed the Cambridge University Examination for Women in 1874 with honours in English and Mathematics. Cambridge did not give degrees to women at the time, so she received her degree through the University of London.
Hertha received her first patent in 1884, for a device designed to divide a line into any number of equal parts, which she explained was useful to artists, decorators, engineers and ship’s navigators.
she attended evening classes on electricity at Finsbury Technical College, led by Professor William Edward Ayrton, a pioneer in electrical engineering. It was a meeting both of minds and hearts — they married on May 6, 1885.
Hertha is celebrated for her work on electric arcs, a highly luminous and intensely hot discharge of electricity between two electrodes, which she began researching in 1893.
she was also known for identifying the mechanism whereby when a wave washes over sand, ripples will appear.
As women were not considered eligible at the time, Hertha was not admitted into the Royal society, a fellowship of the world’s most eminent scientists, based in London. However, she read aloud her observations on The origin And Growth of Ripple Marks to the Royal society in 1904 — the first woman to do this. she was the first female recipient of the Royal society’s prestigious Hughes Medal in 1906 for her work on ripples and the electric arc.
It was not until 1945 that the Royal society appointed its first female fellows — kathleen Lonsdale, a chemist who scored several important firsts in crystallography, and Marjory stephenson, author of the standard textbook for microbiologists.
Hertha Ayrton also took part in suffrage rallies in 1906 and 1913, and was the founding member of the International Federation of University Women and the national Union of scientific Workers.
she died on August 23, 1923, aged 69, from blood poisoning caused by an insect bite.
Sheila Glazebrook, Limpsfield, Surrey.
QUESTION Is it true that Poland approached France in the Thirties with a view to waging a pre-emptive war against Germany?
MUCH of the post-World War II research on diplomatic relations between Poland and the two superpowers it had the misfortune to be sandwiched between — fascist Germany and Communist Russia — has asked the question whether the Polish leader, Marshal Josef Pilsudski, considered a preventative war on Germany in March and April 1933.
A lot of the post- war literature confidently asserts this was the case. For instance, historian sir John Wheeler- Bennett, in Munich: Prologue To Tragedy (1948), writes: ‘In March 1933, Pilsudski warned M. Daladier [ the French prime minister] that German rearmament was progressing far more quickly and in much greater degree than was generally supposed...
‘The Marshal, it is said, proposed that direct action should be taken to crush Hitler by means of a “preventative war” by France, Britain and Poland.’
It has been claimed that France’s refusal might have been one of the reasons why Poland signed the GermanPolish non-aggression pact.
However, later research tells a different story. A study by Polish historian Marian Wojciechowski in 1975, making use of declassified Polish and French archives, found no documentary evidence that such a proposal was ever made.
The ‘preventative war’ story had been circulated in Paris newspapers in late october 1933, but their source was the Polish Embassy.
Wojciechowski concludes that Pilsudski never intended to wage war, but used the story to force Hitler to offer favourable terms in the German- Polish nonaggression pact, which was signed on January 26, 1934.
Alan Beith, Henley-in-Arden, Warks.
QUESTION Why does Crawley Town FC have a devil on its badge?
FURTHER to the earlier answer that claimed the Red Devils nickname was adopted by Crawley Town only recently, I wrote an historical piece in the Crawley Town FC programme that proves we have been known as the Red Devils since the club turned professional and became a limited company in 1962.
I suspect we were trying to bring some marketing pizazz to excite younger fans, and it was at this time that we started selling Red Devils badges. There were mentions in programmes about this and the nickname. We have held on to this nickname despite attempts to saddle us with the bland alternative, The Reds.
As for the club crest, this has changed a few times, but was originally similar to the town crest and motto (‘I Grow and I Rejoice’). It wasn’t until the nineties that a crest was used regularly on the players’ shirts and this has generally included a Red Devil.
The 1960/61 crest was based on the town crest, which was topped with what could be taken as a devil, which might have sparked the idea for the Red Devils.
Mike Fox, Crawley, W. Sussex.