As the inventor Stephen Salter noted in a journal article in 2016, while the nuclear industry sabotaged his renewable energy research, it was Nigel Lawson, as energy secretary, who pulled the plug on it in 1982.
One of those at the UK Atomic Energy Authority who had risked their jobs by sending documents said in a note: “Just because you aren’t paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”
I first met Stephen when I was a child, and he was building Freddy the Robot, pioneered by my father, Donald Michie. A couple of years ago, Stephen told me: “I remember ridicule in the 1960s when your father predicted that one day every child would have their own computer. Perhaps he should have said three.”
After Idi Amin expelled the Ugandan Asians in 1972, Stephen hosted a family in his Edinburgh flat. He always championed migration, innovation and environmental sustainability.