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OTHER
PROJECTS
EYE ON THE FUTURE
In 1967 Barnes Wallis was working on the development of STOL 'hypersonic' airliners that would travel at 12,000 mph and fly at between 125,000 and 200,000 feet. How much would they cost and how long would this new dream project take?
BNW: "It depends on the effort and money put into it. If they would put 400 million pounds into it, we could probably do it within the next four or five years, but I doubt if I shall get a grant at all.
I believe them to be perfectly within our powers because curiously enough they lead you to a very much simpler form of aircraft with a cheaper structure which can be made out of any of the new materials which are coming on.
Because I am probably in opposition to everybody else in the aircraft operational business I believe that the real future lies in the small machine carrying a limited number of people, say 60 or 70, and made in large numbers. You increase the frequency of your services instead of increasing the size of your aircraft and I think it's far better to take a risk in the event of an unforeseen accident, losing the lives of only 50 or 60 people rather than having the horrible accident which would come to pass in a jumbo carrying four or five hundred. Fuel consumption is correspondingly less, and per passenger mile the aircraft will be very much more efficient".
Another remarkable project occupying Barnes Wallis at about this time was a mammoth airship a thousand feet long and several times the size of the R.100 using lightweight carbon fibre, a material stronger than steel. "I am gradually coming to the conclusion that it can be done".
After seeing a small girl wearing leg-irons such as the ones his father wore in 1920, Barnes Wallis devoted much time and energy to perfecting lighter callipers for polio victims.
In this down-to-earth requirement as in everything he did, he followed his guiding principle, "The quality of what we do will be the deciding thing, and it is on our quality that we shall survive".
PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
BNW: "I have found that the more opposition and the more criticism that one gets, the more one has to perfect one's idea in putting it forward and half the joy in life consists in the fight not in the subsequent success...
I think you have got to be tough. I think you have got to express your opinions definitely and firmly but I don't say it follows that you're always right.
You first do all your own thinking and then you find out what other people have thought and you will find generally that you have thought of something quite original that nobody had thought of before. And in a way you know, the less you know about the subject the better you are qualified to introduce original ideas.
I think it's the essence of arriving at something new".
 HANDING
ON THE TORCH
Barnes Wallis's own experiences at Christ's Hospital were the key to his ongoing and life-long interest in education in general and the teaching of science in particular. Wallis fervently believed that a scientific education taught by the heuristic or discovery method which he himself had enjoyed, was not only the best of all forms of education, but the one sure foundation upon which the future greatness of Britain could be built.
Over many years, Wallis had been unashamedly dedicated to the belief that Britain needed its educated class. To Wallis, good science teaching would create a technologically sophisticated reservoir of leadership which would give Britain a new revival and make her the head and centre of a Commonwealth which in turn would share in this glory.
For his work on the geodetic Wellesley and Wellington, Barnes Wallis had received the CBE.
Then in March 1951 he was granted the sum of £10,000 for his dam-busting weapon and its method of delivery after his case had been grudgingly considered by the Tribunal on Inventions. His eligibility for an Inventors Award was obvious to most including his old supporter and friend Sir Wilfred Freeman, but Wallis's initial reticence was because he felt that "the real credit is not due to me but to the aircrews who did the job".
Characteristically he directed the Award to charitable, educational and unselfish ends - to the Foundation he established within Christ's Hospital for the education of the children of Royal Air Force personnel. Their selection was not to be by competitive examination.
BNW: "I earnestly desire selection to be based upon the service record of the father".
The Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund added £10,000 to match the capital investment Wallis provided, plus a commitment to pay one-third of the total cost of maintaining and educating at Christ's Hospital all the children admitted via the Foundation.
Even more important to Wallis, serving officers of 617 Squadron, the heirs of the men that had gone "in jeopardy of their lives", voluntarily pledged active interest in the boys and girls of the Foundation.
With this wealth and strength of support and his own confidence and boundless energy, Wallis, as Treasurer and Chairman of the Council of Almoners, directed the reconstruction of the buildings and all the facilities of Christ's Hospital, even re-designing the central heating system. More especially he formulated a programme of social and educational reform which would enable Christ's Hospital to meet the demands placed upon it during the second half of the twentieth century.
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