NAVAL RANGE-FINDERS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 301, 1 October 1938, Page 10

NAVAL RANGE-FINDERS

THE INVENTOR’S DESIRE. The man whose brain governed the accuracy of most of the British guns fired during the war died at Torquay recently at the ago of seventy-eight. He was Dr. AY. Stroud, one of the founders of the Glasgow firm of Barr and Stroud, scientific instrument makers. With his partner and life-long friend, Professor Archibald Barr, who died seven years ago, Dr. Stroud invented the first successful rifle range-finder accepted by the War Office. Range-finders and other delicate devices for improving the effectiveness of artillery, naval and anti-aircraft guns followed, until hundreds of thousands of the partners’ instruments were in use. If it had not been for a university lecture which he heard by chance at Oxford, Dr. Stroud would have become a clergyman.

He died a rich man. Yet at one time, when his inventive genius failed to reward him, he wanted to sell to Barr his share in the partnership’s devices—for sixpence. Dr. Stroud, who was horn in Bristol, went to Oxford to specialise in Latin and Greek, intending to enter the Church. He was a gentle youth, with a horror of guns and war. But he was attracted so much to physics by a lecture given by Professor Tyndall that he switched over to that subject. After studying in Germanyc, he became, at the age of twenty-five, Cavendish Professor of Physics at Leeds University. It was here he jmet Barr, who had been appointed to the Chair of Engineering at the same university. One day in 1888 they saw a War Office advertisement asking for a rangefinder accurate to within 4 per cent, at 1000 yards. At first the young professors failed. Driven on by Barr’s tenacity, Stroud devoted all his leisure to improving their first effort. He began to give lectures in the villages near Leeds to raise funds for the work. In the early ’nineties their range-finders were accepted. Unable at first to find a manufacturing firm to take up their inventions, the professors were forced into business on their own account. The small workshop which they openill Glasgow in 1895, employing a few men, was soon inadequate. Their rangefinders were finding a world market. In 1904 they moved into a large factory in Glasgow and found work for 1000 men.

A member of the family told a ‘‘‘Sunday Express” representative at Torquay: “Dr. Stroud’s contribution to the partnership was his remarkable knowledge of optics. “He and Barr pooled their resources. They borrowed from each other when the necessity arose and if one had a hundred pounds they would share it.” One of Dr. Stroud’s naval range-find-ers could find a target twelve miles away.