engineering

Tim Dinsdale

Tim Dinsdale is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Tim Dinsdale rather than just read about it. In short: Timothy Kay Dinsdale (27 September 1924 – 14 December 1987) was a British cryptozoologist who attempted to prove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. Life Dinsdale was born in Aberystwyth, Wales, the son of Felix and Dorys (Smith) Dinsdale, who were on a year's leave from China where his father was a shipping agent.

Key takeaways

Tim Dinsdale belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Tim Dinsdale to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Tim Dinsdale from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Timothy Kay Dinsdale (27 September 1924 – 14 December 1987) was a British cryptozoologist who attempted to prove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster.

Life Dinsdale was born in Aberystwyth, Wales, the son of Felix and Dorys (Smith) Dinsdale, who were on a year's leave from China where his father was a shipping agent. Along with his parents, his older sister, Felicity, and later a younger brother, Peter, he lived in Hong Kong, Antung, and Shanghai, going to the China Inland Missionary School in Chefoo some 500 miles away from his home. This necessitated a journey along the coast and in 1935 the ship, SS Tungchow, containing 70 British and American schoolchildren, was seized by pirates. Eventually Dinsdale and the other children were rescued by HMS Hermes (95) a British Aircraft carrier. The 10-year-old Dinsdale wrote an account of the adventure which received second prize in a competition run by a local newspaper, his first success as a writer. In 1936 he and his brother returned to Britain to attend King's School, Worcester as boarders, and his sister was at a girls' school. In 1942-3 he attended the de Havilland Aeronautical Technical School, and also volunteered in the Home Guard, where during training he sustained a bullet wound to the hand, the object not being removed for 28 years. He joined the Royal Air Force becoming a pilot, and was training in Rhodesia and South Africa when the war ended so returned to complete his aeronautical training, and joining the aircraft industry. In 1951 he married Wendy Osborne. They went on to have four children: Simon, Alexandra, Dawn, Angus. They moved to Toronto where he became an aeronautical engineer for Avro Aircraft Ltd, moving to Rolls-Royce aircraft division in Montreal in 1952, and back to Reading in the UK in 1956. He was mainly involved on the flight testing of jet engines. He was an Associate member of the Royal Aeronautical Society. Being made redundant from the aircraft industry in 1962 he took a job as a self-employed insurance salesman, which allowed him to spend more time on a passion he had developed for proving the existence of the Loch Ness Monster, and which was to take over his life. He later got income from lecturing and the sale of books. On 14 December 1987 he died of a heart attack at his home in Reading, and was cremated on 21 December. He was survived by his wife and four children.

Loch Ness Monster

The 1960 film An article "The Day I saw the Loch Ness Monster" in Everybody's magazine (21 Feb 1959) caught his attention, and he began reading more about the topic. In April 1960 he made a lone expedition to the Loch, with six days of watching. On the fourth day (21 April) and sixth day (23 April) he took cine film of a moving object on the surface. Along with his binocular observations, he was convinced that the film of 23 April was authentic proof of the existence of the monster, so next day he got a dinghy to take a similar track which he recorded on the remaining part of the film for comparison. Having shown the film to various people, he was approached by a newspaper reporter, and on 13 June the incident was reported in the Daily Mail with images and the film was shown on the BBC Panorama TV programme. Following this, he was commissioned to write a book Loch Ness Monster which was published in 1961. The story and subsequent comments spread through the media. According to one author

The sensational result of Dinsdale's Expedition was to inspire an extraordinary revival of the mystery and trigger two decades of intensive surveillance of the loch's baffling surface. One consequence was the formation of the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau (LNPIB) in 1962 by MP David James with naturalist Sir Peter Scott, which mounted volunteer groups each summer until 1972. Dinsdale twice acted as Group Commander for two weeks. In 1966 the film received publicity again, having been analysed by the Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre (JARIC) which included the statement that the object was 'probably animate'. However, additional analyses of the Dinsdale film have cast doubt on its validity, suggesting it was a case of mistaken identity and that the film shows a boat under poor lighting conditions.

JARIC's estimates of the size and speed of the object are now believed to be overestimates due to miscalculations of the angle of the camera and cuts in the film. Analyses overlaying multiple frames seems to show a pale blob towards the rear end of the object, which appears in multiple frames and matches with the position of the helmsman of a boat at the stern by an engine, similar to that of the boat used by Dinsdale for comparison. Although Dinsdale attempted to rule this out by organizing for a small boat to sail a similar route later that morning, this comparison was filmed under different lighting conditions with a white boat unlike the mahogany red colour he had described the object to be. It has also been noted that the object in film does not actually submerge as often perceived but blends into the greyer reflections of the water in the monochromatic film. Although Dinsdale asserted he viewed the object clearly with binoculars, they actually had a wider field of view than his telephoto lens. A computer enhancement of the film done for 1993 Discovery Channel documentary Loch Ness Discovered claimed to shadow or a body of a large animal behind the hump underwater, but such a shadow would not be visible in the conditions and is likely reflections of the shore behind the object. Although most researchers do not believe Dinsdale to be a hoaxer, his susceptibility to confirmation bias and trusting dubious sources as evidence of the monster's existence has been criticized.

Later search efforts In 1967 he received a grant from Kodak for photographic equipment to help in his search. He had other sightings including what he described as a head and neck:

My first sighting in 1970 was 10ft. of neck sticking up out of the water. At a range of half a mile, it was as thick as a telegraph post. I saw it next in 1971. I saw a 4ft.-high neck, very clearly, at about 250 yards. Despite as many visits to the Loch as he could afford, he failed to obtain any more film footage.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Tim Dinsdale

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Tim Dinsdale claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Tim Dinsdale before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Tim Dinsdale ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Tim Dinsdale

In research: Tim Dinsdale appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Tim Dinsdale in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Tim Dinsdale is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1924 births, 1987 deaths, British aerospace engineers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Tim Dinsdale outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Tim Dinsdale in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Tim Dinsdale means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Tim Dinsdale out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tim Dinsdale in simple terms?

Timothy Kay Dinsdale (27 September 1924 – 14 December 1987) was a British cryptozoologist who attempted to prove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. Life Dinsdale was born in Aberystwyth, Wales, the son of Felix and Dorys (Smith) Dinsdale, who were on a year's leave from China where his father…

Why does Tim Dinsdale matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Tim Dinsdale?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Tim Dinsdale.