Arthur Joseph Hungerford Pollen

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Arthur Joseph Hungerford Pollen, (13 September, 186628 january, 1937) was a British businessman, author, lawyer and pioneer of navy gunnery. He founded the Argo Company, Limited and was responsible for the Aim Correction system.

Early Life and Career

Pollen was born on 13 September, 1866 in Southwater, Sussex, the eighth child and sixth son in the family of eight sons and two daughters of John Hungerford Pollen (1820–1902), artist and author, a Tractarian who had followed J.H. Newman into the Roman Catholic church, and his wife, Maria Margaret (1838–1919), daughter of the Revd Charles John LaPrimaudaye. He was educated at the Oratory School, Birmingham (1878–84), and read history at Trinity College, Oxford (1884–8), gaining a second-class degree in modern history in 1888. He entered Lincoln's Inn in 1893. He then took an interest in parliamentary politics, standing as Radical candidate for the Walthamstow Division of Essex in the General Election of 1895 which he lost; 4,523 votes to the 6,876 of his opponent, E.W. Byrne, M.P., Q.C. After this setback he continued to speak at Liberal Party events, but declined to stand in the by-election brought about by Byrne's resignation in 1897. On 7 September 1898 he married Maud Beatrice, daughter of Joseph Lawrence, a prominent Conservative M.P. and chairman of the Linotype Company. They had a daughter, who died at the age of four in 1905, and two sons. Pollen became managing director of the Linotype Company in 1898, and proved himself to be both a shrewd businessman and an intelligent technical innovator.

Fire Control

Pollen became interested in the problem of naval rangefinding after witnessing gunnery practice at sea in 1900. Several years of development work were undertaken at the Linotype works, in conjunction with Linotype's designer Harold Isherwood. Following unsuccessful but nevertheless promising trials in late 1905 and early 1906, he won the support of John Jellicoe, Percy Scott, and Sir John Fisher, which resulted in the establishment of an agreement to perfect his ideas. The purpose was to enable long-range naval guns to score hits when attack ship and target were moving fast and relative to each other. Pollen, accustomed to the business methods of civilian life believed his efforts obstructed, however, by an "influential faction" of naval officers that included Reginald H. S. Bacon, Arthur Knyvet Wilson, and Frederic C. Dreyer.

Pollen founded the Argo Company in 1909 to hold his patents, and in 1911 he took a holding in Thomas Cooke & Sons of York, which manufactured his equipment. Pollen's instruments in their final forms were in themselves significant scientific and technical achievements. For example, the incorporation of a differential analyser in his gunnery computer (known as the Argo clock) anticipated by nearly twenty years the work in this important area of both D. R. Hartree and Vannevar Bush. In 1910 he devised a rangefinder which could be used even at dusk. This was sold to the Russians, the Royal Navy having refused even to examine it. Before the First World War his privately circulated papers on technology, tactics, and strategy were read in influential naval and political circles. Battle experience largely validated Pollen's technical and tactical views, and key members of his pre-war design team were thus charged with the development of the Royal Navy's post-war fire-control systems. In 1925, moreover, the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors ordered that £30,000 be paid to Pollen for his contributions to the Dreyer system, which before the war had incorporated—albeit imperfectly—elements of the Argo clock without his knowledge or permission.

During the war Pollen was a leading naval journalist, writing for Land and Water and lecturing widely. He also schemed to have Sir John Jellicoe removed as First Sea Lord. (Beatty Papers II. 422, 429.) In addition to his many contributions to newspapers and journals, Pollen wrote a popular general account of the war at sea, The Navy in Battle (1918). In 1917 he achieved great success in America as an unofficial representative of British interests. After the war Pollen returned to business, serving on the board of the Birmingham Small Arms Company and again as managing director of the Linotype Company. Pollen was also vice-president of the council of the Federation of British Industries, chairman of the British Commonwealth Union, and in the last years of his life took an active role in the development of English Catholicism as chairman of The Tablet.

Pollen was a handsome man whose exceptional intellect and engaging manners attracted the friendship of many prominent figures in the navy, business, academia, the arts, and sport. His favourite pastimes were shooting and golf. Pollen died on 28 January 1937 at his home at 238 St James Court, Buckingham Gate, in London.

Wealth at death; £12,430 5s. 10d.: Probate; 5 March, 1937.