Tom Bacon

Tom Bacon developed the fuel cell for the Apollo 11 moon rocket at his home at Westfield in Little Shelford. He 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.” How cool is that?

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.

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 is known to have had a silicone disc taken to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission on his desk.

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.

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."

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 (see left). 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.