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microscopic jig to install the diaphragm, because each time I used tweezers the thin film tore.
    Eventually, through trial and error, I managed to lay the diaphragm on first and clamp it on afterward. It wasn't perfect, but it worked.

    Next I measured the length of the aerial to try to gauge the way it resonated. It did appear that 1800 MH was the correct frequency. But when I set the device up and made noises at it with an audio-signal generator, it was just as the Americans had described - impossible to tune effectively. But after four weekends I realized that we had all been thinking about the Thing upside down. We had all assumed that the metal plate needed to be opened right out to increase resonance, when in fact the closer the plate was to the mushroom the greater the sensitivity. I tightened the plate right up and tuned the radiating signal down to 800 megacycles. The Thing began to emit a high-pitched tone. I rang my father up in a state of great excitement.

    "I've got the Thing working!"

    "I know," he said, "and the howl is breaking my eardrums!"

    I arranged to demonstrate the Thing to Taylor, and he traveled up with Colonel Cumming, Hugh Winterborn and the two American sweepers. My father came along too, bringing another self-taught Marconi scientist named R J Kemp, who was now their Head of Research. I had installed the device against the far wall of the hut and rigged up another monitor in an adjoining room so that the sounds of the audio generator could be heard as if operationally.

    I tuned the dials to 800 and began to explain the mystery. The Americans looked aghast at the simplicity of it all. Cumming and Winterborn were smug. This was just after the calamity of the Burgess and Maclean affair. The defection to the Soviet Union of these two well born Foreign Office diplomats in 1951 caused outrage in the USA, and any small way in which British superiority could be demonstrated was, I soon realized, of crucial importance to them. Kemp was very flattering, rightly judging that it would only be a matter of time before Marconi got a contract to develop one themselves.

    "How soon can we use one?'" asked Cumming.

    Kemp and I explained that it would probably take at least a year to produce equipment which would work reliably.

    "I should think we can provide the premises, Malcolm," said Kemp to Cumming, "and probably one man to work under Peter. That might get you the prototype, but after that you'll have to get funding."

    "Well, it's quite impossible for us to pay, as you know," replied Cumming. "The Treasury will never agree to expand the secret vote."

    Kemp raised his eyebrows. This was obviously an argument Cumming had deployed many times before in order to get facilities for nothing.

    "But surely," I ventured, "if the government are serious about developing things technically for MI5 and MI6 they will have to allocate money on an open vote."

    "They're most reluctant to do that," replied Gumming, shaking his head. "As you know, we don't really exist."

    He looked at me as if a sudden thought had occurred to him.

    "Now, perhaps if you were to approach the Admiralty on our behalf to ask for assistance on their open vote..."

    This was my initiation into the bizarre method of handling Intelligence Services finance. It was a problem which was to plague me until well into the 1960s. Instead of having resources adequate for their technical requirements, the Intelligence Services were forced to spend most of the postwar period begging from the increasingly reluctant Armed Services. In my view, it was this more than any other factor which contributed to the amateurism of British Intelligence in the immediate postwar era.

    But, as bidden, I set out to persuade the Admiralty to carry the development costs of the new microphone. I made an urgent appointment to see Brundrett's successor as Chief of the Naval Scientific Service, Sir William Cook. I knew Cook quite well. He was a wiry, redhaired man with piercing