Tom Bacon

Tom Bacon, developed the fuel cell for the Apollo 11 moon rocket. He lived in Little Shelford for over 50 years. Tom is why there is a rocket on the village sign.

On a visit to the United States, President Nixon put his arm around Tom’s shoulders and said, "Without you Tom, we wouldn't have gotten to the moon.”

After the successful lunar landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969, Tom and his wife Barbara met astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins at a reception at 10 Downing Street.

A blue plaque on Tom's home was unveiled on November 7 2024. It was unveiled at Westfield, 82 High Street, Little Shelford in March 2025.

Listen to a presentation about Tom Bacon at the Little Shelford Local History Society by David Martin on Feb 12 2025.

Tom received $15,000 from NASA for his fuel cell which he used to buy a Morris Marina car.

On the historic night in July 1969, Tom didn’t watch the moon landing made possible by his fuel cell. The Eagle module from Apollo 11 touched down during what was night time in Little Shelford. Tom had a heavy day at work the next day and wanted to get a good night’s sleep instead of staying up into the early hours to watch history being made on TV.

Fuel cells were first demonstrated by Sir William Grove in 1839 but his invention laid dormant for over 100 years until it was revived by Tom Bacon.

Dr Francis ‘Tom’ Bacon OBE, developed the first practical hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell which produces electricity electrochemically with no emissions except water.

The fuel cells provided heating, lighting and communications for the astronauts as well as water for humidification and drinking water.

Tom had a silicone disc from one of the fuel cells taken to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission on his desk. It’s now in the Whipple Museum in Cambridge.

The fuel cells performed flawlessly during all the Apollo flights. After the Apollo Missions, Tom’s fuel cells continued to be used in all the Space Shuttles.

Tom later had a cat named Armstong after the first man on the moon.

Memories of Tom Bacon from villager Brenda Bishop:

"Tom was completely absorbed in his fuel cell project and appeared to have no interest in worldly affairs which is why we teased him that he didn’t know who the PM was. That is almost certainly why he always had a well worn Old Etonian tie. He was far from snobbish and clothes would have been of no interest. We suspect he didn’t have any other tie so went on wearing his battered one.

"To the Americans invited him to all their space launches. He always commented “they are so kind, I don’t know why they always invite me”. We certainly knew why!

"He and his wife, Barbara (Barbie), had a daughter and two sons. One son was another Tom in interests and ability. He was sadly drowned in the river as a young man. It must have shattered them all."

At Westfield, the Bacon family kept a cow for milk and cheese. Tom used his engineering brilliance to develop an electric cheesemaker using a kilner jar turned by an electric motor to make the process somewhat quicker.

Tom was known to enjoy an occasional drink in the Plough, now the Side Quest, with other fellow scientists.

Dr Francis ‘Tom’ Bacon OBE, FRS lived for many years at Westfield in the High Street and subsequently at 34 High Street. He developed the first practical hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell which produces electricity electrochemically with no emissions except water.

Born at Billericay in Essex in 1904, he attended Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied engineering and then worked at the engineering firm C.A.Parsons in Newcastle. He first began to be interested in the idea of fuel cells in 1932 and did some early experiments before World War II. After the outbreak of war he continued this work at King’s College, London but was then transferred to do anti-submarine research at Fairlie on the Clyde in Scotland.

In 1946 he and his family moved south to Little Shelford. He re-started his fuel cell work at Cambridge University in the Departments of Colloid Science, Metallurgy and Chemical Engineering. During the 1940s and 1950s Tom made the crucial discoveries which enabled the highly efficient alkaline fuel cells to be later used in the Apollo spacecraft. In 1955 lack of funding resulted in his work being closed down and the apparatus was stored for six months in an outhouse at Westfield.

With further funding secured, Arthur Marshall (later Sir Arthur) generously provided space for the fuel cell work to continue at Marshall of Cambridge, a major engineering firm specialising in aviation based on the Newmarket Road. In 1959 Tom Bacon and his team at Marshall’s presented the idea of the alkaline fuel cell to representatives of British industry with the fuel cells powering a welding kit and a forklift truck but no interest was shown.

However, in1961 President Kennedy made his declaration that America would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Pratt and Whitney won the contract from NASA to develop alkaline fuel cells as the secondary power source for the Apollo Missions. The fuel cells provided heating, lighting and communications for the astronauts as well as water for humidification and drinking water. Pratt and Whitney assembled a formidable team of about 1,000 people and the fuel cells were developed at a cost of about $100 million.

The fuel cells performed flawlessly during all the Apollo flights. After the successful lunar landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969, Tom and his wife Barbara met astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins at a reception at 10 Downing Street. They gave him a signed photograph of the first footprint on the moon. On a visit to the United States, President Nixon put his arm around Tom’s shoulders and said, "Without you Tom, we wouldn't have gotten to the moon.” After the Apollo Missions fuel cells continued to be used in all the Space Shuttles.

Tom Bacon received many medals and awards in the 1960s and 1970s, including an OBE in 1967 and he was made an Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1973. He was also awarded an honorary DSc from Newcastle University, was a founder Fellow of the Fellowship of Engineering and in 1991 was presented with the first Grove Medal.

After the Apollo Missions, fuel cell development slowed down until the importance of the environmental benefits and the potential break from fossil fuels began to be realised in the 1990s. Tom clearly saw that fossil fuels were a finite resource and would eventually run out. He realised the potential of fuel cells, with water as the only by-product, as an important step towards reducing CO2 emissions and future environmental damage.

Tom Bacon was a practical engineer at heart who was keen to see the application of his low cost alkaline fuel cells. He was always conscious of the need for new forms of hydrogen storage. Throughout his life he was interested in all types of fuel cells and their possible applications including transport such as buses and cars, distributed power generation and use in remote locations. Fuel cells are now being used in these and other applications in many different countries round the world.

Villager Brenda Bishop writes; We never understood why Tom Bacon didn’t get a knighthood when pop stars did. It can’t have been offered and refused (as James Meade did) because his wife, Barby Bacon, would never have forgiven him!

He was invited to many launches in the States and said “I don’t know why they make such a fuss of me. They are very kind”. His modesty was genuine. When we first came to the village in 1972 he contacted us and said,”I don’t want to be a nuisance but would your children like to see my moon things”. You can guess that a 14 yr old and a 13 yr old were down the High Street in a cloud of dust. He was single minded about his research. So much so that I think if you had asked him who the Prime Minister was he may not have known. He always wore the same rather tatty Old Etonian tie. As you may know he gained his engineering degree and then enlisted with Marshalls as an apprentice to ‘really learn engineering’.

Tom Bacon died in 1992 and is buried in the Little Shelford churchyard.

His obituary was published by the Royal Society (1993) and his papers are held in the Churchill College Archives, Cambridge. A fuel cell electrode, given to him in 1965, is now in the Whipple Museum in Cambridge. A complete fuel cell from the Apollo programme features in the Space Gallery in the Science Museum, London.

BBC Look East coverage of Tom Bacon and the fuel cell

In this radio interview from BBC Radio 4's The World At One, Nancy Wise interviews Francis Thomas Bacon about his fuel cell which had most recently been used in the Apollo 8 mission.

Tom Bacon Royal Society biography

Up-to-date information about fuel cells and their current applications can be found at www.fuelcellpower.org.uk

You can read an article including quotes from Tom Bacon here.

David Martin's talk about Tom Bacon to the Little Shelford Local History Society

I never met Tom Bacon. But I know there are some people in the room tonight who personally knew Tom, and his family.

I’m up here because I love history. I edit and write the Little Shelford history website and I’ve read dozens of articles about Tom Bacon. I championed the rocket featuring on the village sign because watching man land on the moon in 1969 when I was 8 years old was one of the most memorable days of my life.

BTW - This is Tom Bacon’s portrait which is in the National Portrait Gallery. I wonder how many Little Shelford residents have made it to there?

Tom Bacon, who lived in Little Shelford for almost 50 years, developed the fuel cell for the Apollo 11 moon rocket.

American President Richard Nixon. According to Tom’s obituary, President Nixon was at a reception for the astronauts in the United States when he wandered over to Tom, put his arm round his shoulders and announced to the people nearby: “Without Tom, we wouldn’t have got to the moon.”

In the end, Tom won an OBE and now he has been given his own blue plaque. But in reality, he struggled to persuade other people about the value of his cells for more than 30 years.

So first a bit of background on the Bacon family. Tom had blue blood. He was a direct descendant of Sir Nicholas Bacon, who was Lord Keeper of the Great Seal in the time of Queen Elizabeth I. Sir Nicholas’s son was Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the famous philosopher and essayist.

So who was this great scientist who lived in Little Shelford for over half a century?

Dr Francis ‘Tom’ Bacon OBE spent 35 years developing what became known as the Bacon cell, a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell, an electrochemical device which converts the energy created by a chemical reaction into electricity.

Tom developed the first practical hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell which produced electricity with no emissions, except water.

Let’s be clear. It is now known as the Bacon Cell. But Tom didn’t invent it. He just developed it to make it useable on the Apollo rocket and elsewhere.

Tom wasn’t originally from here. He was born in Billericay in Essex in 1904. He attended Eton and Cambridge University, where he studied mechanical engineering.

Having graduated, Bacon became an apprentice with C.A. Parsons in Newcastle, who made steam turbines. One area he was involved with was developing searchlights and specialist lighting for the fast-growing film industry.

A few years into his job, in around 1932, he found himself intrigued by a couple of articles he read in the magazine Engineering. Those articles described ideas for combining hydrogen and oxygen and using the resulting electricity to power a vehicle. Tom was intrigued, and started his own experiments. He actually created his own version of a fuel cell by 1938.

Hiding it away at work/ quit his job to follow his obsession

The idea of a fuel cell had already been around for 100 years. The principle first demonstrated by this Welsh lawyer called William Grove in 1839. But the theory was never been put into practice.

Let’s get back to our Little Shelford hero, Tom Bacon. Tom and his family moved to Westfield on Little Shelford High Street in 1946. He then re-started his fuel cell work at Cambridge University with the aim being to make it useable for industry or transport.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Tom made crucial developments which enabled the highly efficient alkaline fuel cells to be later used in the Apollo spacecraft.

But it wasn’t all straightforward. At one stage, in 1955, lack of funding resulted in his work being closed down and his apparatus was stored for six months in an outhouse at Westfield.

The pauses in the development of the fuel cell were described by Tom’s family as “periods of reflection.” But Tom was fortunate in that he had a monied background, his father having settled a significant portion of the family estate on him at an early age according to his obituary. This financial independence combined with his single-mindedness were instrumental in the development of his fuel cell.

Eventually, in the 1950s, Sir Arthur Marshall provided space for Tom to continue his fuel cell work at Marshall of Cambridge, which for those of you who don’t know is a major engineering firm specialising in aviation based on the Newmarket Road.

In 1959 – that’s 20 years after developing his first working fuel cell - Tom Bacon and his team at Marshall’s presented the idea of the alkaline fuel cell to representatives of British industry with the fuel cells successfully powering a welding kit and a forklift truck. But no interest was shown. Tom must have felt like he was knocking his head against a brick wall and that his dream was going nowhere.

Two years later, in1961, President Kennedy declared that America would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. American company Pratt and Whitney won the contract from NASA to develop alkaline fuel cells as the secondary power source for the Apollo Missions. In turn, Pratt & Whitney, tasked with developing a practical source of electricity for the Apollo mission, licensed Bacon’s technology.

So, after more than 25 year of almost knocking his head against a brick wall, Tom saw the American company Pratt and Whitney assemble a formidable team of about 1,000 people and the fuel cells using Tom Bacon’s science and ideas were developed at a cost of about $100 million.

I love this photo – I had this picture as a jigsaw when I was nine years old.

But back to the presentation. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin couldn’t have got to the moon with Tom Bacon. The Bacon fuel cells developed by Tom provided heating, lighting and communications for the astronauts on Apollo 11 as well as all their drinking water.

The fuel cells like the one on this slide performed flawlessly during all the Apollo flights. After the Apollo Missions, Tom’s fuel cells continued to be used in all the Space Shuttles too.

Let’s remind ourselves – Tom didn’t invent the fuel cell. Fuel cells were first demonstrated by Sir William Grove in the 19th century. But his invention laid dormant for over 100 years until it was revived by Tom Bacon.

Dr Francis ‘Tom’ Bacon OBE, developed the first practical hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell which produces electricity electrochemically with no emissions, except water. As I have already mentioned, President Richard Nixon said: “Without Tom, we wouldn’t have got to the moon.”

Here’s a lovely story about Tom. On the historic night in July 1969, Tom didn’t watch the moon landing made possible by his fuel cell. The Eagle module from Apollo 11 touched down during what was night time in Little Shelford. Tom had a heavy day at work the next day and wanted to get a good night’s sleep instead of staying up into the early hours to watch history being made on TV.

After the successful lunar landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969, Tom and his wife Barbie met astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins at a reception at 10 Downing Street. You can see the three astronauts here pictured with Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

Sadly, TV coverage of the reception which you can still see on Youtube don’t feature Tom himself.

Tom did speak to the astronauts at the Downing Street reception. Neil Armstrong even gave him feedback on how well the fuel cell operated on the flight to the moon.

The astronauts gave Tom this signed photograph of the first footprint on the moon. I’m afraid the local legend that the astronauts visited him at his home in Little Shelford isn’t true. The closest we got was one of the Bacon family cats was named Armstrong after the first man on the moon.

In the end, NASA made a one-off payment to Tom for his fuel cell of $15,000.

A complete fuel cell from the Apollo programme features in the Space Gallery in the Science Museum, London.

Tom was also given part of one of the fuel cells from Apollo 11 which he kept on his desk in Little Shelford. It’s now looked after by the Whipple Museum in Cambridge.

Now what about Tom and his time in Little Shelford?

Tom and his wife Barbi moved to Westfield at 82 High Street in 1946.

Brenda Bishop became friends with the Bacon family when she moved to the village. When we first came to the village in 1972 he contacted us and said: ”I don’t want to be a nuisance but would your children like to see my moon things”. You can guess that a 14 yr old and a 13 yr old were down the High Street in a cloud of dust. He was single minded about his research.

We do know that his wife Barbie banned Tom from talking about the fuel cell at family meal times.

At home, Tom worked in a dark panelled drawing room at Westfield leading onto the garden, which he called the school room.

By the front door of Westfields, there were 16th century portraits of Francis and Nicholas hung on the hall.

Brenda Bishop shared another lovely memory of Tom.

She recalls: "Tom was completely absorbed in his fuel cell project and appeared to have no interest in worldly affairs which is why we teased him that he didn’t know who the Prime Minister was. That is almost certainly why he always had a well worn Old Etonian tie. He was far from snobbish and clothes would have been of no interest. We suspect he didn’t have any other tie so went on wearing his battered one.”

Tom was known to enjoy an occasional drink in the Plough, now the Side Quest, with other fellow scientists.

The Bacon family moved to Trees, a house which was next to Kirby Lodge in 1978, although it has since been re-developed.

Tom died in 1992. He is buried in the graveyard at All Saint’s Church. It was notable in more ways than one because it was the new Vicar, Christopher Ash’s, first funeral.

Tom’s papers are held in the Churchill College Archives, Cambridge.

And his remarkable achievements are remembered with the Apollo rocket which is featured on the village sign.

So that is Tom the man and a few local anecdotes of his life in Little Shelford.

But what happened to the Tom’s fuel cell after the missions to the moon?

Today, versions of the Bacon fuel cells have many uses including in electric cars.

Let’s hear something from the man himself. Here he is speaking to Radio 4

His achievements will be marked imminently through Little Shelford’s first blue plaque which will shortly be mounted on the gatepost at 82 High Street.

Name is wrong on the blue plaque. His actual name was Francis Tom Bacon. He signed his name as Francis T. Bacon. But he was known as Tom to his friends.

Tom Bacon was a practical engineer who was single-mindedly determined to see the application of his low cost fuel cells. Throughout his life he was interested in all types of fuel cells and their possible applications including transport such as buses and cars, distributed power generation and use in remote locations.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you Tom Bacon. He was quite clearly a remarkable man.

Posted Nov 17 2025