Further information: This is an excerpt from a longer film LSA2980

During the First World War, Henry Joseph Round became known as 'Captain X' in British Military Intelligence. He installed electronic direction finding equipment in stations across the entire western front and the British Isles. On May 30 1916 his equipment revealed movements in the German fleet off Wilhelmshaven in the North Sea. The British fleet set sail to intercept them and the momentous Battle of Jutland took place which put paid to any further attempts by the enemy to gain supremacy of the oceans. Round's crucial role in this was revealed in 1920 by Admiral Sir Henry Jackson, First Sea Lord at the time of the battle, and he was awarded the prestigious Military Cross.

During the Second World War he worked for the Admiralty on developing sonar to discover and track the movements of enemy submarines. He remained working on echo sounding with the Government until 1950.

In 1952 he was awarded the prized Armstrong Gold Medal by the Radio Club of America 'in recognition of his contributions during half a century to the radio art, and especially of his revolutionary developments during World War 1 in the fields of direction and position finding and the high amplification of short wave signals.' There is more about the medal in later pages but a sad postscript is that E.H Armstrong took his own life in 1954 and a letter from Round to the Radio Club of America ended: "I salute the spirit of my great friend."

In between the wars he was prolific in his work, focussing much of his time on valve and microphone development.

Between 1921 - 31 he was chief of Marconi Research and was involved in the famous wireless broadcast of singer Dame Nellie Melba in 1920 and, in 1924, his Marconi- Sykes magnetophone (microphone) facilitated the first outside broadcast of a songbird, a Nightingale singing as cellist Beatrice Harrison played nearby.

He developed valve after valve; he directed the installation of wireless transmitters; he produced a gramophone recording system and designed a large audience public address system which was used to relay King George V's speech at the Wembley Exhibitions and he registered patents on synchronising sound with pictures on cinema films.

David Jervis 2017