Mary Stopes Roe, the daughter of the inventor of the bouncing bomb, Barnes Wallis, tells of her father's views on how an invention is meaningless without the people prepared to put it into action.
'I do remember him saying, perhaps not entirely seriously, but he said it all the same, "Oh, any fool can invent something, it's the person who has to carry it out", and of course there's a lot in that. Any fool can invent something. Well, it wouldn't work would it, but you can invent it all the same.'
Wallis's recognition and appreciation of the need to implement ideas came from his years of experience in marine and then air engineering.
