Robert W. Boyle is the inventor that history forgot.
The Canadian physics professor was responsible for opening up the ocean to military and scientists around the world with what was revolutionary technology at the time, sonar. Few remember him.
Boyle made a major development in sonar technology during the First World War. Not only did it change the face of war, but sonar allowed scientists to understand the ocean in a way that would have been impossible without it.
“Acoustics underwater is sort of like light in the air,” said Rich Pawlowicz, a professor of oceanography at the University of British Columbia. Underwater, light can only travel a few metres, but sound can travel halfway around the world.
That would make Boyle akin to Thomas Edison, who didn’t invent the light bulb but gave the world the first usable one. The world definitely remembers Edison though.
Boyle was teaching physics at the University of Alberta during the First World War. His colleague, Sir Ernest Rutherford, was in England at the time trying to develop technology to detect German submarines. Scientists were rushing to build machines that used sound to see the ocean.
French inventor Paul Langévin is widely credited as the inventor of sonar. According to All True Things by Rod MacLeod, Langévin had the theory behind sonar in 1916, but his machine was too bulky and was never used on any ships.
In 1917, Boyle created the first working sonar. He changed the material of the inner device to quartz, making it more compact and with a clearer quality. This was the first sonar to be mounted on a warship, according to MacLeod.
Boyle never took any patents for the sonar, as Langévin did. As MacLeod states, between the tight secrecy regulations surrounding the Royal Navy at the time and Boyle’s strong sense of humility, he wasn’t credited for the invention either. So he slipped out of historical recognition.
When Boyle’s sonar turned on the figurative lights in the ocean, they were used mostly for war. In the Second World War, the battle moved underwater. As Popular Science’s James L.H. Peck reported in 1946, that was only possible because of sonar.
“The new eyes and ears of the ship,” wrote Peck, “do their jobs as silently as those of people.”
Elinor Sloan, professor of military and strategic studies at Carleton University, said that anti-submarine warfare was Canada’s main mission during the Cold War as well, and continues today.
“This was just a mission that Canada took on,” said Sloan. “We’re a little bit better at it.”
Once the wars had stopped, scientists began looking around the ocean for more than enemy subs.
Sonar has let scientists examine parts of the ocean that were inaccessible before. As sound waves bounce off objects in the ocean, sonar can relay much more than location. It can give the size, shape, density and direction of movement depending on how the waves return.
“The only way of seeing this is with acoustics,” said Pawlowicz, “because you can make a kind of photograph of what the ocean looks like.”
Ocean scientists like Pawlowicz are now using sonar to map the deep ocean mountains, areas that could never be accessible to machines or people. He said that his research right now examines the flow of water between deep-sea basins, the valleys of the ocean.
“All of this would be impossible without acoustics,” said Pawlowicz.
“Sonar is as useful a tool as using light to see everything you see in every day life.”
All of this may not have happened if not for Boyle.
Documentation Material:
The most important piece of documentation I acquired was the pages in All True Things: A History of the University of Alberta 1908-2008 by Rod MacLeod. I found it on the Library and Archives Canada website and arranged a viewing of it. This is the most thorough piece of information regarding the main character in my story, Robert W. Boyle. As he was given little (if any) credit for inventing a workable sonar, and so it is difficult to find reliable information on him.
My second piece of documentation is an article from 1946 in Popular Science. It was referenced in a different article I was reading about the history of sonar. Instead of using the secondary account of what the article was saying, I went straight to the source. I found it quite simply through Google. The article goes through the history of sonar and explains how it was important for military operations in the Second World War. It jumps in time, however, from the development of the theory to ships suddenly having sonars. That missing step is where Boyle came in and did his work.