62 Facts About Geoffrey Pyke

Geoffrey Nathaniel Joseph Pyke was an English journalist, educationalist, and inventor.

Geoffrey Pyke's mother quarrelled with relatives and made life "hell" for her children.

Geoffrey Pyke sent Pyke to Wellington, then a public school mainly for the sons of Army officers.

At his mother's insistence, Geoffrey Pyke maintained the dress and habits of an Orthodox Jew.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Geoffrey Pyke quit his studies to become a war correspondent.

Geoffrey Pyke persuaded the editor of the Daily Chronicle to send him to Berlin.

Geoffrey Pyke used the passport obtained from an American sailor by travelling via Denmark.

At Ruhleben, Geoffrey Pyke met fellow graduates from Oxford and Cambridge.

Geoffrey Pyke soon became ill and he nearly died of double pneumonia and food poisoning, but recovered in summer.

Geoffrey Pyke compiled statistical data on previous escapes, and together with Falk, made a decision to escape, following a regime of calisthenic exercise to prepare.

Geoffrey Pyke visited his news editor to confess that his mission had failed.

Geoffrey Pyke was the first Englishman to get into Germany and out again, and he was encouraged to write a series of articles for the Chronicle.

Geoffrey Pyke refused, citing lost interest in being a war correspondent.

Geoffrey Pyke divided his time between lecturing on his experiences and writing for the Cambridge Magazine, edited by Charles Kay Ogden.

Geoffrey Pyke arranged for some food parcels to be sent to friends in Ruhleben; the boxes contained details of his method of escape concealed in false bottoms.

In March 1918, Geoffrey Pyke met Margaret Amy Chubb, they were married within three months of meeting.

Between the First and Second World Wars, Geoffrey Pyke attempted a number of money-making schemes, speculating on the commodity market, using his own system of financial management and working through a number of different stockbrokers to avoid attention and higher stock broking charges.

Geoffrey Pyke's wife, Margaret, was a strong supporter of the school and its ideas.

Geoffrey Pyke recruited a psychologist, Susan Sutherland Isaacs, to run the school, and although Geoffrey Pyke had many original ideas regarding education, he promised her that he would not interfere.

Geoffrey Pyke continued with his city speculations which funded the Malting House School.

Geoffrey Pyke had ambitious plans for the school and began to interfere with the day-to-day running, whereupon Susan Isaacs left The Maltings.

In 1927, Geoffrey Pyke lost all his money and became bankrupt.

In 1934, Geoffrey Pyke opposed the wave of antisemitism in Nazi Germany, citing humanitarian reasons.

Geoffrey Pyke campaigned for Christian leaders to make simultaneous public statements condemning the Nazis, raising money to set up an organisation to combat anti-Semitism.

Geoffrey Pyke wrote a number of magazine articles on the irrationality of prejudice and started work on a book.

Geoffrey Pyke invented a motorcycle sidecar to carry medical supplies or a patient.

Geoffrey Pyke raised funds to pay for American-built Harley-Davidson motorcycles that were then plentifully available second-hand, and persuaded workers to make the sidecars free of charge with the results being sent out to Spain.

Geoffrey Pyke assisted in arranging for the manufacture of mattresses for the Spanish government, for the collection of redundant horse-drawn ploughs for Spanish farmers, and bundles of hand-tools for use by labourers.

Geoffrey Pyke published aggressive propaganda brochures pointing out that British workers were not to consider their contributions a form of charity while Spanish people were fighting and dying for their fellow workers.

In 1939, before the outbreak of the Second World War, Geoffrey Pyke considered the problem of finding out what the German people actually thought of the Nazi regime.

Geoffrey Pyke's idea was to perform an opinion poll in secret by sending volunteers to Germany to interview ordinary people.

Geoffrey Pyke concluded that this would be an excellent idea, and put this new plan into action.

Raleigh and Patrick Smith did make a broadcast on the newly formed BBC World Service in which they contrasted the mood in Germany with that in London, and Geoffrey Pyke prepared a report for the War Office.

Geoffrey Pyke tried to generate interest in his opinion poll results and in repeating the exercise in Germany using people from neutral countries.

Geoffrey Pyke got little support, but did attract the attention of Conservative Member of Parliament Leo Amery.

Amery did think that Geoffrey Pyke's idea was worthwhile and privately convinced others including Clement Attlee and Sir Stafford Cripps.

Geoffrey Pyke's friends concluded that nothing would come of the scheme and persuaded Geoffrey Pyke to let the matter drop.

Geoffrey Pyke then wrote on grand strategy and worked on a number of ideas for practical inventions.

Geoffrey Pyke was unaware that the development of radar provided a much better means of achieving this effect.

Geoffrey Pyke proposed the development of a screw-propelled vehicle based on an old patent called the Armstead snow motor.

Geoffrey Pyke envisaged that a small force of highly mobile soldiers could occupy the attentions of many enemy soldiers who would be required to guard against possible points of attack.

Geoffrey Pyke took the problem to Max Perutz at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge; Pyke knew that Perutz had previously worked on the physical properties of snow with regard to the difficulties of Operation Plough.

In September 1942, Geoffrey Pyke sent a 232-page memorandum to Mountbatten detailing his ideas.

The project to build a large aircraft carrier of pykrete was known as Project Habakkuk, and Geoffrey Pyke was sent to Canada with a personal introduction from Winston Churchill to Mackenzie King.

In September 1943, Geoffrey Pyke proposed a slightly less ambitious plan for pykrete vessels to be used in support of an amphibious assault.

Geoffrey Pyke proposed a pykrete monitor 200 feet long and 50 feet wide mounting a single naval gun turret; this could be self-powered or towed to where it would be used.

Geoffrey Pyke suggested the use of pykrete to make breakwaters and landing stages.

In late 1943, Geoffrey Pyke submitted to Mountbatten a memorandum, nearly fifty pages long, explaining his ideas for a solution to the problem of unloading stores from ships where no proper port facilities are available and few roads inland.

Geoffrey Pyke's idea was to use pipes of the type that were used to transport fuel from ship to shore, to move sealed containers that would contain any type of sufficiently small material objects.

Geoffrey Pyke suggested that 4 or 6 inches pipes would handle smaller equipment and larger objects could be passed through two-foot pipes.

Geoffrey Pyke's idea was similar to the cleaning brushes that are sometimes forced along pipes by the pressure of the fluid and to the pipeline pigs which today are used for cleaning and telemetry.

Geoffrey Pyke then proposed that his idea for "Power-Driven Rivers" could be extended to the transport of personnel.

Geoffrey Pyke worked out ideas for supplying the passengers with oxygen and suggested that the problem of claustrophobia might be alleviated by travelling in pairs and by the use of barbiturate drugs.

Geoffrey Pyke proposed that this system could be used to move people from ship to shore, from island to island, through swamps and over mountains and anywhere where conventional transport was difficult.

Geoffrey Pyke reasoned that the energy in a pound of sugar cost about the same as an equivalent energy in the form of coal and that while Europe had plenty of sugar and unemployed people, there was a shortage of coal and oil.

Geoffrey Pyke recognised that such a use of human muscle power was in some ways distasteful, but could not see that the logic of arguments about calories and coal were unlikely to be sufficiently persuasive.

Geoffrey Pyke was given a commission to look into the problems of the National Health Service and, characteristically, made his contribution as a part of a minority report.

Geoffrey Pyke remained eager to convey his unconventional ideas, and continued to both write and broadcast them.

Geoffrey Pyke campaigned against the death penalty, and for government support of UNICEF.

Geoffrey Pyke's landlady found his body the following Monday morning.

The death of Geoffrey Pyke removes one of the most original if unrecognised figures of the present century.

Geoffrey Pyke remained always the knight-errant, from time to time gathering round him a small band of followers but never a leader of big movements.