Peter Terence Thomas.

Peter Terence Thomas was born near Penderwen (now Penderyn), at the southern end of the Brecon Beacons, Wales in early April, 1876.

His father, Dafydd Francis, and mother, Janice Wilma, made a living hill-farming and tending their flock of sheep. They were so poor that Peter had to go to school without any socks to keep his feet warm as the family could ill afford such luxuries.

Peter attended the local village school until he was 11, and even at such an early age he showed considerable scientific prowess. His scrapbook on "The Ticks and Fleas of Sheep" contains over 170 specimens and can be seen on display in the Framley Museum's Farming section. He was an accomplished amateur engineer as well and was called on by most of the villagers whenever something required repair.

During the Great English Wool Famine of 1885 Peter's parents made their fortune trading wool across the border. With their new found wealth they sent Peter, now with plenty of socks, to the prestigious Chigley College in Epping where his engineering and scientific endeavours flourished.

In 1898 Peter spent the summer with relatives at the family pub the "Leonard of Blaina" in Russell Street, Edgeware. Peter and his cousin, Michael, were idly flicking crown tops into an ashtray in the centre of the table. Michael's father, Joseph Assheton Fincher (a London shopkeeper), was watching the boys play and later developed the game and patented it as Tiddly-Winks in 1890.

In 1890 Peter left Chigley and moved to a secret location where he was instrumental in the building and testing of Britain's second steam powered submarine (based on the Narcis Monturiol design of 1867 with improvements by Reverend George William Garrett). He suggested the use of "split metal discs, rather like large washers" instead of leather to seal the piston of the steam engine, an idea that lives on today in the form of piston rings, although his main work was investigating the use of lambs wool as a lagging and fireproofing material for the steam engine and boiler. Unfortunately a fire broke out on the vessel on March 31 1892, when the fire box failed and, as Peter was living aboard the submarine at the time, he lost most of his works and possessions, including a 10 volume treatise on "The Diseases and Treatment of Sheep", in the conflagration. This was the end of British submarine experimentation until the ordering of 5 Holland class submarines in 1900.

With the catastrophic failure of his submarine experiments, Peter teamed up with a school friend from Chigley, Barnard Moncrief, to investigate the use of a thin metal coating to the internal envelope material of hot air balloons to reduce the risk of fire. They formed a company, Peter-Barnard Balloons, to carry out this work. Unfortunately, they were unable to secure the required venture capital and P-B Balloons failed to take off.

Disillusioned by his losses and failures Peter turned toward his other passion for experimentation, radio. He moved to London to take up a research post and, in 1896, he teamed up with Guglielmo Marconi who had arrived to demonstrate radio telegraphy. Peter designed the apparatus Marconi used in his demonstrations, he is acknowledged for his invention of the yellow spark that could easily be seen by the audience unlike the standard blue one Marconi had used previously, which had required the demonstrations to be held in darkness.

Early in 1906 Peter, seeing that the future of radio was in voice transmission, tried to convince Marconi that radio telephony was the way to go, but Marconi had invested too much in Telegraph Keys and was trying to monopolise the market, so Peter, who had been ridiculed by Marconi for his inability to grasp Morse Code, left Marconi to his own devices and teamed up with Canadian Reginald Aubrey Fessenden to develop radio telephony. Peter's work on the transmit/receive switch enabled Fessenden to make his historic broadcasts on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve that same year.

The switch was developed over the next 10 years. Starting out as a simple high voltage, high current change over switch and progressing through various designs and types to a sprung type that required the operator to hold it pressed while talking.

While he mostly worked on his own inventions, Peter also assisted many others in the field with their own experiments. In 1907 he teamed up with Canadian brothers Mark, Michael & Maximilian Mattesson, to investigate the benefits of moving magnets over moving coils in microphones. The brothers went on to develop the MMM. Mattessons Moving Magnet Microphone.

1909 saw Peter back in the lab, this time with the Germaniac Johann Morze who intended placing miniature thermionic valve amplifier circuitry within the microphone body. This device later became the basis of the "Morze Geräusch-Verbesserung Mikrophon" or Noise Improvement Microphone. The working model was finally completed when Karre Braumeister stepped in to assist as Johann had found what he thought of as an insurmountable problem.

In 1910 Peter married Opal Fasildory, an Italian girl he had met while working with Marconi and kept in contact with. They married in a small chapel that stood on a hill overlooking Pontypridd. After the ceremony there was a demonstration of radio telephony utilising Peter's latest development of the change over switch where, when you stopped speaking, you simply stopped pushing the button and the radio apparatus reverted to receiving. The demonstration was a success and the Mike Era was born. It is not recorded if the couple had any children, but they did have a dog, by all accounts he was a playful cur.

In 1912 Peter teamed up with Dutch inventor Alain Du Veek who was trying to make a machine to produce a new kind of sock. Peter had met Alain whilst on holiday in Amsterdam. Peter was very helpful as he saw a need for inexpensive but good quality socks, remembering the days of his cold feet as a child. Du Veeks' mother had designed a sock that kept the foot warm whilst giving ample ventilation so the foot would not perspire, thus keeping feet comfortable and boots non odorous. The Dutch sock makers welcomed the new "soK Het maCen apparaat" (sock making device) and were buying them as fast as they could be produced. During the Great Storm of Friday January 3, 1913 (1 pm - 3.15 pm) a lightning strike caused one of the sock making machines to malfunction, and a full reel of wool was woven into a single, toeless, sock. When the sock was outside drying, it was noticed that any wind would catch it and the direction and intensity gauged. It was subsequently attached to the top of the washing line and referred to as "De Wind op Sok" or "The Wind Up Sock", now known as the Wind Sock. Peter returned to Wales from Holland just before the outbreak of World War 1 a rich man.

With the many patents taken out and trade marks registered for his transmit/receive switches Peter granted manufacturing licences and received royalties from the production of them. Added to that regular income was his payment from Alain Du Veek for his part in the sock making machine. In 1920, aged 44, Peter retired early to a gentleman's life, enjoying regular walks around his new home in Newport. Later that year a payment from Johann Morze for Peter's help on the prototype of the Geräusch-Verbesserung Mikrophon was forthcoming.

Peter died on April 8, 1932, just a week after his 56th birthday.

His memory lives on to this day as the transmit/receive switches are still called "PTT" in his honour. Despite the widespread use of his inventions and ideas he has sunk into obscurity and not even made it into the 100 Welsh Heroes list.

Note: This article was submitted by Señor Ussal Del Krappo via email.

Ussal is a Spanish stutent who is currently studying Historia De los Medios (Media History) at the Instituto de Universidad, campus Largo de Vuelta del Alambre. He has found the club site useful in researching his thesis into the "Orígenes de la difusión de radio" (Origins of Radio Broadcasting) and wished to contribute to the Innovators Pages from his list of "people who started it all" as a way of thanking us for such an informative site. His English is quite good (better than my Spanish, anyway) and I didn't have to do too much to make it read "properly" in English.

Thanks Ussal.

As PT Thomas was a fairly local man is anyone familiar with him? Email me if you can add to his history.