Edmund Harry Cooke-Yarborough (25 December 1918 – 10 January 2013) was the lead designer of the Harwell Dekatron, one of the world's early electronic computers and also a pioneer of

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...

Life

Ted Cooke-Yarborough was born at

Campsall Campsall is a village in South Yorkshire, England. It lies to the north-west of Doncaster, at an elevation of around 50 feet above sea level. The village contains Campsall Country Park. The village falls within the civil parish of Norton, th ...

in the

Yorkshire West Riding The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county County of York, West Riding (the area under the control of West Riding County Council), abbreviated County ...

, northern

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, the only child of barrister George Eustace Cooke-Yarborough (1876-1938), JP, of Campsmount, Yorkshire, and his wife Daphne Isabel (died 1984), daughter of Henry Cordy Wrinch. The Cooke-Yarborough family were a branch of the family of

Cooke baronets There have been three baronetcies created for persons with the surname Cooke, two in the Baronetage of England and one in the Baronetage of Ireland. One creation is extant as of 2013. The Cooke Baronetcy, of Wheatley Hall in the County of York ...

, of Wheatley Hall, Yorkshire. Cooke-Yarborough was educated at

Canford School Canford School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school for pupils aged 13–18). Situated in 300 acres of parkland near to the market town of Wimborne Minster in Dorset, south west England, it is one of the largest sch ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset (unitary authority), Dors ...

, southern England, where he built his first

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...

equipment, and studied

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

Christ Church, Oxford Christ Church ( la, Ædes Christi, the temple or house, '' ædēs'', of Christ, and thus sometimes known as "The House") is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, the college is uniqu ...

, where he was president of the

University A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

Physics Society. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he worked as part of the secret Air Ministry RDF radar project, initially in

Dundee Dundee (; sco, Dundee; gd, Dùn Dè or ) is Scotland's fourth-largest city and the 51st-most-populous built-up area in the United Kingdom. The mid-year population estimate for 2016 was , giving Dundee a population density of 2,478/km2 or ...

and then at

Swanage Swanage () is a coastal town and civil parish in the south east of Dorset, England. It is at the eastern end of the Isle of Purbeck and one of its two towns, approximately south of Poole and east of Dorchester. In the 2011 census the civil ...

within the

Telecommunications Research Establishment The Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) was the main United Kingdom research and development organization for radio navigation, radar, infra-red detection for heat seeking missiles, and related work for the Royal Air Force (RAF) d ...

(TRE). He led a team that produced an automatic airborne radar system, used to warn aircrews of aircraft approaching from behind. He continued his work in radar at

Malvern Malvern or Malverne may refer to: Places Australia * Malvern, South Australia, a suburb of Adelaide * Malvern, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne * City of Malvern, a former local government area near Melbourne * Electoral district of Malvern, an e ...

and then on guided weapons in the United States. After WWII, he was sent on a Combined Intelligence mission to interview German scientists concerning their development work on radar and guided weapons and. In 1946, Cooke-Yarborough joined UK Atomic Energy programme to work on nuclear instrumentation. Soon after his transfer to the

Atomic Energy Research Establishment The Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) was the main Headquarters, centre for nuclear power, atomic energy research and development in the United Kingdom from 1946 to the 1990s. It was created, owned and funded by the British Governm ...

in Harwell (AERE Harwell) in 1948, he supervised the production of the Harwell Dekatron Computer, working with fellow designers Dick Barnes and Gurney Thomas. All three visited the

EDSAC The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was an early British computer. Inspired by John von Neumann's seminal ''First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'', the machine was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the Universi ...

computer in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

during the design stage. In 1951, Cooke-Yarborough attended the first

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

symposium on the

transistor upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch e ...

. Afterwards he developed the

Harwell CADET The Harwell CADET was the first fully transistorised computer in Europe, and may have been the first fully transistorised computer in the world. The electronics division of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, UK built the ...

computer, which was one of the first

digital computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These pro ...

s to use transistors. in 1957, Cooke-Yarborough was appointed as head of the Electronics Division at AERE Harwell, and published "''An Introduction to Transistor Circuits''". In 1980, Cooke-Yarborough was elected Fellow of the

Fellowship of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senior ...

(later to become the

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senior ...

) and was appointed chief research scientist at AERE until he retired in 1982. On 20 November 2012, Cooke-Yarborough attended the reboot of the Harwell Dekatron Computer at the

National Museum of Computing The National Museum of Computing is a museum in the United Kingdom dedicated to collecting and restoring History of computing hardware, historic computer systems. The museum is based in rented premises at Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes, Bucki ...

, the last time that he appeared in public. In 1953, Cooke-Yarborough married Anthea Katherine (1928–2007), daughter of John Alexander Dixon, of Whirlow, Hook Heath,

Woking Woking ( ) is a town and borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in northwest Surrey, England, around from central London. It appears in Domesday Book as ''Wochinges'' and its name probably derives from that of a Anglo-Saxon settlement o ...

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

. They had a son and daughter, and also grandchildren.Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 1, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2003, p. 882

Selected publications

* *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooke-Yarborough, Edmund 1918 births 2013 deaths People from Norton, Doncaster People educated at Canford School Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford English physicists British electronics engineers Computer designers Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering