My favorite anecdote about a speeding ticket

Latest revision as of 10:47, December 25, 2013

Here's some light reading about speeding tickets -- well, one famous speeding ticket -- for your enjoyment this holiday season.

Scotsman Robert Watson-Watt was born on April 13, 1892. He gained renown and a knighthood for his work on British air defense both before and during WWII, and he is credited -- a shared credit with Arnold Wilkins -- with coming up with a means of detecting aircraft by radio waves. In other words, he helped come up with the concept we know as "radar." Worked out pretty well.

Flashforward years later. When exactly is not known, but it was before 1959. Mr. Watson-Watt was traveling in Canada by car, and alas, he was pulled over for speeding, by an officer who was using a hand-held radar gun. Mr. Watson-Watt wrote a delightful poem to commemorate the experience. The first half of the poem is as follows:

Pity Sir Robert Watson-Watt,

strange target of this radar plot

And thus, with others I can mention,

the victim of his own invention.

His magical all-seeing eye

enabled cloud-bound planes to fly

but now by some ironic twist

it spots the speeding motorist

and bites, no doubt with legal wit,

the hand that once created it.