The Devices of War

London: Werner Laurie. Very Good/Very Good. 1956. Hard Cover. 8vo Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. Frontis plate. With illustrations from photographs. A few light foxing spots. 232 pages clean and tight. DURING THE pAst eight years, the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors has given more than one million pounds of public money to men, most of them civilians, whose ideas helped Britain to win the last war. Over a thousand claims were considered and they ranged from Mulberry Harbour, Pluto (the pipeline under the ocean), the Whittle jet engine and Radar, to minor technical inventions such as improved parachutes or a new design of motor torpedo boat. This book reveals, in most instances for the first time, the human story behind some of these inventions. It describes how the inventors came to think of their ideas, their struggles in winning official approval, and how they benefited from their monetary awards. The theme of the book is summed up in the words of Lieutenant-Colonel L. V. S. Blacker, who was granted £32,000 for his P.I.A.T. and other anti-tank weapons; 'Today much credit is due to people who, deIing judgments and prophecies of those supposedly their betters in some official position, have dared to produce inventions which have been realistic, economical and, above all, just what was needed at the time both to counter the enemy, and to press forward with the attack'. .