Walter Leslie (Bill) Watton [1907-2004], was born at South Stoneham, Hampshire in 1907, and was the eldest of 5 children. His family moved to Brighton during WWI where Walter was awarded several scholarships. Walter attended Brighton Municipal Technical School where he gained a University of London BSc at the age of 20 in 1927 (presented 9 May 1928, when he was aged 21). Walter then continued to study at Imperial College and was awarded its post graduate Diploma for work in the field of calorimetry. He also became an Associate of the Royal College of Science.
After leaving Imperial College in April 1930, Bill worked for a brief period testing valves in Muswell Hill for Cambridge Instruments before joining Robert Watson-Watt's team at the Radio Research Laboratories in Slough (Bill was interviewed by Robert Watson-Watt).
In January 1935 Bill left the Watson-Watt team to move to EMI at Hayes to work on television receivers and was part of the team that gave the first demonstration of the EMI system to the Postmaster General and the BBC. He also worked on the radio relay system supplied to the BBC for the outside broadcast of the 1937 Coronation.
In November 1939 Bill was transferred back to work on radar devices and other highly secret work and ended up working with Alan Dower Blumlein. Later in WWII Bill was seconded from EMI to the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Malvern.
Following WWII Bill went back to working with EMI on television development and helped to develop the equipment used for colour television. Bill became a Senior Engineer with EMI and by the 1960s was working for EMI's Telemetry Division, Feltham, on military developments and in particular RF characteristics of explosive devices. He pioneered measuring techniques and researches into the behaviour of these devices and was recognised as an expert in this field. This resulted in Bill sitting on a number of Ministry committees concerned with the safety of these devices in which capacity he visited North America and Australia. Bill finally retired from EMI in 1972.
Bill was a member of the IEE for over 50 years. He joined the IEE as an Associate Member in 1947, and became a Member in 1966.
A longer biography, written by Bill's daughter, is available from the IET Archives.
