Percy Saltzman Interview: Sir Robert Watson-Watt

What's Watt - Sir Robert (That Is)

I interviewed Sir Robert Watson-Watt, inventor of wartime RADAR, which helped screw Adolf & Co. Remember?

Radar is used today in kitchen zappers and to catch highway zingers in speed traps.

Radar and zappers both use microwave radiation.

So when Sir Robert himself got Zapped in a radar speed trap on highway 401, the headlines ricocheted around the world with the speed of summer lightning:

"CAUGHT IN HIS OWN TRAP"
"BITER BIT"
"SERVES HIM RIGHT"
"GOT HIS JUST DESSERTS"
"HOIST WITH HIS OWN PETARD"
"THAT'LL LARN HIM!"

Sir Robert laughed and laughed. He was a jolly Scot, round and soft and tasty, like plum-duff pudding.

A cheery chap he, with a braw, bricht, moonlicht Scottish drawl and burr, ye ken.

His house in Thornhill, just north of Toronto, was done up in Quebec knotty pine. Very pretty. So was his naughty wife.

By the way, Sir Robert was also a fellow meteorologist. Ha!

Whenever I use the microwave in my kitchen, I always think of that gentle genius that I met and loved, Sir Robert Watson-Watt.

May angels sing him to his rest. (He helped save me from Auschwitz!)