Collection of diary extracts, publications, patents, correspondence, newspaper cuttings and photographs.
Exent
1 box
Language
English.
Admin. history/Biography
Humphrey Grahame Bennetts (1909-1989) was born in the Kolar Gold Fields near the city of Bangalore in India. Raised as a child in England, the exact details of his education are unknown, but it is known that he attended school in Penzance, Cornwall, and completed his education at Faraday College [the Electrical Standardising, Testing and Training Institution, also known as Faraday House]. He was first employed as an apprentice at Lincoln Electric, a manufacturer of electric motors. Upon completing his apprenticeship, he was trained as a direct sales representative, but Bennetts decided he was more interested in the manufacturing processes, so he secured employment with Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company Limited, the British heavy electrical engineering company. Here he became a member of the Research & Development Department, where he worked on a number of projects and patented several designs, some of which are contained within this collection. During the 1930s, Bennetts worked in a team at Metropolitan-Vickers which held responsibility for the development of radar. Subsequently he became involved with the installation of the first radar transmitters for twenty stations which were placed around the coast of Britain during the Second World War, and was responsible for their maintenance during the war years. Following the end of the war, Bennetts continued his work with the Research & Development Department at Metropolitan-Vickers, continuing to produce patents. Following the acquirement of the company by the General Electric Company in 1967, Bennetts became re-employed at first Manchester University, and then Salford Technical College, where he helped doctorate students with their experiments. Later in his life Bennetts frequently went to Annapolis, Maryland in the USA to assist his daughter and son-in-law with their marine business. In Autumn 1988 he suffered a heart attack while on one of these visits and died there in August 1989.
