Cecil Reginald Burch
Cecil Reginald 'Bill' Burch was a key figure in the industrial development of induction heating applied to electric furnaces; in the evaporative distillation of organic substances, leading to a range of low vapour pressure oils and greases, and in the application of this technique to the pharmaceutical industry; and in the construction of a range of vacuum pumps and of novel thermionic power valves. In university life his main work was in optics. In the field of mineral dressing, he invented new classifiers and separators.
He was born in Oxford on 21 May 1901, the fifth child of Professor and Mrs George James Burch.
Educated at Oundle and Caius College, Cambridge, before taking up an apprenticeship with Metropolitan Vickers, in 1922. His first patent with the company (in 1924) concerned "Improvements in receivers for high frequency electric signals".
He joined the Physics Department in 1924, where he was initially engaged in work on induction heating. In fact this stemmed from work in the company's radio department as part of his college apprenticeship, where he had designed and used a small induction heating unit to bake out the anodes of the small receiving valves being made there. He developed a new water-cooled coil for a furnace able to melt non-ferrous metal. This early work resulted in Metropolitan Vickers being able to patent designs for large induction furnaces for use in the steel industry.
Burch was also engaged in developing oils and greases with extremely low vapour pressures, which he named Apiezon.
This work facilitated the development of large high-powered thermionic valves. Burch, his brother Francis Parry Burch and J. H. Ludlow developed a single large valve used by the G.P.O. for sending transmissions from their Rugby transmitter in the early 1930s in place of the multiple small valves previously used. After some more development work the team were ready to apply for a patent when, sadly his brother died from a transfusion of incompatible blood.
The high-powered tetrode valve was on display at the works when a group of engineers from the Institute of Electrical Engineering visited. One of them Robert Watson-Watt was so impressed with the amount of radio power that he immediately went away and asked the Air Ministry to order the valves for work he was conducting on detecting aircraft.
The death of Francis hit 'Bill' very hard. They had lived together (at 12 Derbyshire Lane, Stretford) and worked together from 1922 until his death in 1933. He needed a clean break, and left Metro-Vicks in September 1933 to undertake optical research at Imperial College (a Leverhulme fellow). However, he continued to undertake consultancy work for M-V.
Three years later he moved to Bristol University, where became a fellow of the H. H. Wills physics laboratory. In March 1944 he was elected an F.R.S. on account of his contributions to science especially in connection with the obtaining of high vacua.[1]
The above information is largely condensed from here[2]
See here for a short personal account by J. Harry Leck.
See here [3] for a detailed (42 page) account by Thomas Edward Allibone of Burch's life and work.
See Also
Sources of Information
- ↑ Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Co by John Dummelow
- ↑ [1] Science Museum Group: Burch, Cecil Reginald 1901 - 1983
- ↑ [2] Cecil Reginald Burch 12 May 1901 — 19 July 1983, Elected F.R. S. 1944, by T. E. Allibone, F.R.S.
- ↑ [3] THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS: Report on the correspondence and papers of CECIL REGINALD BURCH (1901-1983), physicist and engineer, deposited in Bristol University Library. Reproduced for the Contemporary Scientific Archives Centre (CSAC 110/1/86)