Sir Henry Bradwardine Jackson

Sir Henry Bradwardine Jackson (born Jan. 21, 1855, Barnsley, Yorkshire [now in South Yorkshire], Eng.—died Dec. 14, 1929, Hayling Island, Hampshire) was a British naval officer responsible for the development of radio telegraphy in the British Navy.

Jackson joined the Royal Navy at the age of 13 and was promoted through the ranks to admiral of the fleet in 1919.

Naval duties sparked his interest in problems of navigation, torpedo mechanisms, and communication over long distances. In 1890 he conceived that wireless waves could aid in ship-to-ship communication and by 1895 succeeded in transmitting radio signals from one end of a ship to the other. By 1900 his efforts resulted in a British government contract with Guglielmo Marconi’s company to install wireless mechanisms on ships of the Royal Navy.

In 1920 Jackson was named chairman of the Radio Research Board of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. There he directed studies on atmospheric interference with radio transmission, direction finding, and radio-frequency measurement. He also conducted pioneering work on shortwave radio reception. Jackson was knighted in 1906.