Military-Industrial Interaction, 1884–1914 295courses for both the target and the test ship presented entirely differ
ent problems from zigzag courses, while high speed made a ship toss
differently from what it did at low speed, and a rough day made more
difference still. Moreover, it was an expensive thing to hitch up the
guns of a battleship to a machine capable of pointing every gun of the
ship at a target. Such an installation had to be made by experts who
thereby learned even the most secret inner workings of the ship.
The most fundamental issue, perhaps, was how to define the desired
level of performance for fire control devices. This depended, in turn,
on what kind of future battle was envisaged. If the Germans planned
to come out and fight in Nelsonian fashion by laying alongside, then
equipment that could pick up an enemy at 20,000 yards in poor light
and drop the first salvo of shells in his vicinity was not critically im
portant. Yet if a machine capable of such refinement could be in
vented, what navy could safely be without it?
This became a real dilemma for the Royal Navy when an ingenious
private citizen named A. J. H. Pollen claimed to have solved the
mathematical and mechanical problems inherent in accurate aiming at
long range even from a moving and tossing ship. When he approached
the Admiralty with drawings of his device in 1906, Admiral Fisher re
sponded with enthusiasm, and declared that the navy should stop at
nothing to get exclusive rights to the invention. Within a month, Pol
len signed a contract guaranteeing him £100,000 and a handsome royal
ty on future sales if tests showed that his machine could do what he
claimed. On the strength of this contract, Pollen set up a new company
to manufacture his invention. He soon got into financial trouble, for
there were all the usual complications in actually building a working
model. Meanwhile, the Admiralty also was facing financial difficulties;
and when a technically proficient officer decided that he could design a
machine just as good as Pollen’s, the Admiralty saw a way of saving the
promised £100,000. It took four years for the navy’s own machine to
achieve a workable form, and that only after plagiarizing from a Pollen
prototype in 1911.^54 Nonetheless by 1913, Winston Churchill, then
First Lord of the Admiralty, could say in Parliament:
“It is not intended to adopt the Pollen system, but to rely on a
more satisfactory one which has been developed by service ex-armor-piercing shells, striking German vessels at far greater range than had been antici
pated, simply glanced off or exploded before penetrating the armor. German shells had
been tested for glancing fire and behaved more effectively, thanks to an appropriate
design.
- A Royal Commission in 1926 officially recognized this infringement of patent
rights, awarding Pollen a sum of £30,000 in compensation. Cf. Anthony Pollen, The