T. H. O'Dell, Inventions and Official Secrecy: A History of Secret Patents in the United Kingdom, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Pp. xi + 149. €39.95 cloth (ISBN 0-19-825942-5).

Abstract

Secrets will always be a factor in the political life of any society, and it could be argued that none enjoy secrets, particularly Official Secrets, quite so much as the English. Inventions and Official Secrecy traces the little known history of UK legislation which permits the British Government to make Official Secrets of certain technical ideas submitted as patent applications, and thereby prohibit their publication. The story begins in the mid-nineteenth century, and introduces a number of interesting inventors, politicians, and civil servants, including Sir William Armstrong, Marconi, the Wright Brothers, Leo Szilard, Sir Barnes Wallis, Sir Christopher Cockerell, the Earl of Derby, Sir Harold Wilson, and the now forgotten civil servant Mr Clode, Solicitor to the War Office in the 1860s; it ends, as the thirty year rule demands, in the 1960s.