|
John Fothergill Crosfield CBE DSc MA (Hampstead, London 22 October 1915 - Hampstead, London 25 March 2012), inventor and entrepreneur, was a pioneer in the application of electronics to all aspects of colour printing and the inventor of the acoustic and subsonic mines during the Second World War. Graduating with a degree in mechanical sciences from Cambridge University in 1936, Crosfield was working on electrical lifts for ASEA in Sweden when war was declared. He joined the Admiralty, where with a team of mathematicians and engineers he was charged with developing sonar, to detect midget submarines, and new types of mines. In 1947, Crosfield founded J F Crosfield Ltd. (later Crosfield Electronics Ltd.) to develop press control equipment, beginning with the Autotron, that enabled magazines to print economically in colour. Following this the company played a leading role in the introduction of colour scanning in 1958, phototypesetting and later the automated composition of pages incorporating pictures and text, a 1970s precursor to Photoshop. He founded Crosfield Business Machines Ltd in 1966 to develop and produce banknote inspection, counting and sorting machines. The companies won 4 Queens Awards for Technology and Exports. De La Rue acquired the Crosfield businesses in 1975. In 1971, Crosfield was awarded the CBE for Services to Industry. Though he was a board member of De La Rue, Baker Perkins and the Scientific Instruments Research Association until 1985, Crosfield found time to research and write ''The Crosfield Family'', ''The Cadbury Family'' and, in 1991, ''Recollections of Crosfield Electronics 1947 to 1975''. He installed an electron-microscope in his studio, using it to scan and image microscopic insect and plant life from his garden. He used these images as the inspiration for surreal but fascinating paintings. Crosfield was noted for his generosity, giving away most of the fruits of his success in his lifetime. He was widely read, a good conversationalist and always interested in the exploits of his large, extended family and his many friends and their offspring. After a short illness, he died at his home at the age of 96. ==Early life, family and education== Crosfield was the third child and second son of a family of prominent Quakers. His father, Bertram Fothergill Crosfield (1882-1951), was managing director and co-proprietor of the liberal dailies The ''News Chronicle'' and ''The Star'', president of the Mid-Bucks Liberal Association and Clerk of the Meeting at Jordans Meeting House. John Crosfield's mother, Eleanor Cadbury(1885-1959), was a daughter of the chocolate manufacturer and Quaker George Cadbury. She was well-known locally as a magistrate, elected as a Liberal to Bucks County Council, and for her work in local charities and political associations.〔 John Crosfield was born at Grove Lodge in Hampstead, London in 1915, the third of six children. As the house was too small for his growing family, his father sold Grove Lodge to the novelist John Galsworthy in 1918 and they moved to Buckinghamshire, on the outskirts of Beaconsfield. From a very young age he had a passion for making things. In the family workshop he made boats, steam engines, jigsaw puzzles and a cannon that he tested on the garage door. The shot went straight through the door and through his father's beloved Daimler. At prep school he and his friends built a model railway through the school grounds. At public school he built an O gauge model railway with a friend and with another friend linked two of the houses with a telephone line and exchanges for their respective studies. He played second violin for the school orchestra, but dropped music in favour of painting and model making.〔 While his early schooling was idyllic, he was bullied and hated the bad food and harsh discipline at the Downs School, where he was sent as a border at the age of nine. The boys slept in three-sided huts with the fourth side open to the elements and here he contracted pneumonia followed by pleural empyema. He was ten years old and spent nearly a year recuperating at the Cadbury holiday home, Winds Point, high in the Malvern Hills. At thirteen, Crosfield went to Leighton Park School, a Quaker school in Reading, where his father had been head boy. He liked physics and maths and Crosfield chose to study engineering. He went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, where his father had also read mechanical sciences.〔 Crosfield was a founder member of the University's Gliding Club, where the flyers developed what they believed to be the first successful winch launch, using an old Buick they adapted for that purpose. Although Crosfield enjoyed Cambridge to the full, with parties, sports (rowing, squash, golf and gliding) and high jinks, he worked hard, noting he had 27 hours of lectures and workshops a week compared to 6 hours for some of his friends. He graduated in 1936 and spent six weeks in Munich to improve his German. Here he was shocked by the virulence of anti-Semitic propaganda, the thin and haggard political prisoners he passed building new autobahns and by Hitler's hate-filled yet strangely mesmerising radio speeches. On his return to England, he found that his reports of what was going on in Germany were met with disbelief.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「John Crosfield」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|