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Recognition at last for Tom Bacon, the scientist you’ve never heard of who helped put men on the moon | Apollo 11
Cambridge home of the engineer who developed fuel system used on Apollo 11 is to receive a blue plaque
Photograph: Evening Standard/Getty ImagesThe efficiency and high energy density of the fuel cells played such an integral role in the success of the Apollo missions that President Richard Nixon told Bacon: “Without you, Tom, we wouldn’t have gotten to the moon.” A direct descendent of the Elizabethan philosopher and empiricist Francis Bacon, he began researching fuel cells while working for an engineering firm in 1932, a few years after graduating from Cambridge with a third-class degree in mechanical sciences. After they returned to Earth, astronauts Neil Armstong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins met Bacon at Downing Street and presented him with a signed photograph of Armstrong’s famous first “small step” on the moon.
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