Commemorative plaque 59105

This blue commemorative plaque records: Jozef Stanislaw Kosacki (Kozacki) 1909-1990. After the fall of Poland in 1939 a substantial fragment of the Polish Army was reconstructed and fought in the Battle of France. After the defeat of France in 1940 the survivors came to Britain where they were regrouped, re-equipped, and stationed along the eastern coast of Scotland building a long chain of coastal defences against a feared German invasion. First Lieutenant Jozef Kozacki was a signals officer of the First Polish Army, stationed in St Andrews. In 1937 he had been commissioned by the Department of Artillery of the Polish Ministry of National Defence to develop an electrical machine capable of detecting unexploded 'duds' on firing ranges and battlefields. He successfully developed a machine constructed at the AVA Electronics factory in Warsaw - the same factory which built the first secret Polish replicas of the German military 'Enigma' cipher machine. Escaping to France after the fall of Poland, Kozacki altered the purpose of the machine to detect land mines. After evacuation to Scotland and to St Andrews, the Polish Military Command revived the work. The army headquarters was in Eden Court on The Scores and in the Ardgowan Hotel in Playfair Terrace, and it was there that Kozacki was given a laboratory, workshop, and an aide with whom to complete and perfect the mine detector. Prototypes were built, and tested on the West Sands. In the North African desert theatre of war the British Army was hampered by the lack of an effective mine detector. The Polish Government in Exile submitted Kozacki's design. In trials it triumphed and was immediately accepted. 500 examples of Mine Detector number 2 (Polish) were rushed to North Africa in time for the battle of El Alamein, where it proved its worth. The basic design was still in use during the 1991 Gulf War, and the Mark 4 version until 1995. Kozacki's design weighed 30 lbs, was portable, reliable, effective and relatively easy to maintain in the field. Kozacki's invention has saved countless thousands of lives and limbs world-wide and continues to do so. He received neither payment nor recognition, save for a treasured letter from King George VI. How did the mine detector work? It consisted of two coils; the first connected to an oscillator, which generated an oscillating current of acoustic frequency. The second coil was connected to an amplifier and telephone. When the coils came into the presence of a metal object, the balance between the coils was disturbed and the telephone connected to headphones reported an altered signal. Kozacki retumed to Poland after the war, where he became one of the pioneers of electronic and nuclear machinery. He held the Chair of Electronics for Nuclear Research in Swierk, and also became Professor at the Military Academy in Warsaw. He died in 1990, having lived to see the collapse of Soviet domination of Central Europe, and was buried with full military honours. Recorded plaque organisation: St Andrews Preservation Trust.