Rowland Emett

• Born 1906-10-22 · Died 1990-11-13

Emett was educated at Waverley Grammar School in Birmingham, where he excelled in drawing and was known for caricaturing his teachers, vehicles, and machinery. He took out a patent on a gramophone volume control when he was 14. He studied at Birmingham School of Arts and Crafts. After school, he worked as a draftsman for the Air Ministry while perfecting his cartoon drawing. From 1939 until the 1960s, he published regularly in Punch. For many years afterwards, his work was credited to "Emett of Punch" when published elsewhere. His cartoons were seldom political, except when he caricatured bureaucratic absurdities. After a spread in Life magazine in 1954, his work became in demand in the United States. As he aged, he turned more and more to designing and supervising the building of his mechanical "things", which always came with silly names. In 1966 he was commissioned by Honeywell to create a mechanical computer, named The Forget-Me-Not Computer.