Wintle suggested that our conference, to which by now he had summoned some others, would go better with sherry all round, and so he sent an Air Ministry messenger across to a pub on the other side of Whitehall. This made the conference unique among the many hundreds that I have attended in Government offices. I was astonished when Wintle said, ‘This is a damned good idea of yours, old boy, issuing direct-vision spectroscopes to the observers. But I have a better idea. Let’s send out spectrographs, so that they can bring back photographs, which you and I can examine for ourselves.’ A cavalryman
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