I've always been curious to know if anybody has seen an Eddystone P14 with an inspector's stamp for some part of John Charles Walsham Reith.
John Reith, later Lord Reith of the BBC, was later the originator of the concept that broadcasting should be a public service, and yet largely outside government control. This website doesn't give a full idea of his vehemence. He was a Presbyterian fundamentalist, six and a half feet tall, and got the inspector's job at Eddystone by being shot through the cheek and shoulder by a German sniper on the brickstacks at Cuinchy, upon which he wrote a note telling his family that he was perfectly all right, walked half a mile to the dressing station with the stretcherbearers tagging along protesting, and broke hospital to see "The Birth of a Nation" three weeks later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R...st_Baron_Reith
At Eddystone he dealt effectively with an inability to meet the standards of the British inspectors which was holding up deliveries He probably made both sides a few offers they couldn't refuse, but part of it was done by eliminating features of the specification which did no good to anybody. He certainly had an inspector's punch, as he used to give impressionable young American ladies cartridges stamped with it. I often wonder if he was quite right about what would impress them.
I remember him on TV in retirement, in the 1950s, looking like John Brown of Kansas in one of his sterner moods, and saying that television was the most dangerous social force we know. I wondered at the time why they let him say that on TV. Probably he told them they had to.