Keith Lucas. 



XXXV 



" He was entrusted with one problem after another in rapid succession, 

 while, simultaneously with this, he held himself open to be consulted, and 

 was constantly consulted, on numerous problems. 



" The Experimental Kesearch Department was evidently the place where 

 his abilities would have scope, and there he took up his work. This 

 was the department which had so lately been presided over by Edward Busk, 

 a distinguished graduate of King's College, Cambridge, with whom were 

 associated a number of other Cambridge men, with whom Lucas enjoyed 

 working. 



" In breaking new ground of the kind to be dealt with in this department 

 many of the steps meant making measurements of quantities which had 

 never before been measured, and in this he must have found a link with the 

 analogous difficulties in his own study of Physiology. Methods had to be 

 evolved, and instruments to be designed and made. Here Lucas excelled, 

 and in the instrument shop, under Mr. F. Short, he was welcomed and 

 honoured by staff and mechanics alike. 



" It chanced that the problem of how to make au accurate sight for 

 dropping bombs from aeroplanes was under consideration shortly after Lucas 

 came. He worked at this, and the seed has been sown which will greatly 

 improve the aeroplane as an offensive weapon. 



" On the way to his solution, by means of the gyroscope, he evolved his 

 ' space damped pendulum,' which is in large measure free from the effect of 

 the movements and oscillations which the aeroplane imposes on everything 

 within it. This was a simple device, which avoided the complexities 

 attendant upon the use of gyrostats, and one of its practical outcomes was a 

 new instrument, an aeroplane level, of considerable use in a number of 

 further experiments on aeroplane flight. 



" The trend of all this work indicated how necessary it was to obtain an 

 autographic record of the movements, of roll, pitch, and yaw of an aeroplane, 

 both when the pilot abandoned all control, and also when the pilot exercised 

 his utmost vigilance in correcting all deviations. This Lucas was asked to 

 do ; he completed a method outlined for this purpose by Mr. Busk, and 

 simplified it. He worked hard, rising day after day at four in the morning for 

 flights when the air was at its stillest and sun low, and, in conjunction with 

 Captain Mayo and Major Goodden, eventually produced a beautiful series of 

 curves of motion which were sent in to the Advisory Committee on Aero- 

 nautics, and were received with marked approval. 



" With these data, he now knew what classes of erratic motions he had to 

 deal with, when either the flyer or the wind gusts interposed to upset or alter 

 the aim taken with his bomb sight. 



" By this time he had decided that the use of the more complex gyrostat 

 could not well be evaded in favour of his simpler scheme of the ' space 

 damped pendulum.' He adopted a suggestion of Major Hopkinson, E.E.S., 

 who had also been for some months a member of the Royal Aircraft Factory 

 staff, and made an improved bomb sight. 



