Wimperis was born on 27 August 1876 to Joseph Price Wimperis, an Australian merchant, and Jemima Samuel in
Edmonton, London. He started his studies at
Royal College of Science (part of
Imperial College) and then moved to
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge as an advanced student in 1898. During this period he became a
Whitworth Scholar, wrote a series of engineering books covering
internal combustion, road transport and
air navigation. Among his many inventions and works are the Wimperis accelerometer of 1909, the first
accelerometer rugged enough for use measuring the performance of automobiles. He was directed to
Elliott Brothers for manufacture, and this started a long relationship between Wimperis and the company. The same year they introduced a
gyroscopic turn indicator, and followed this with an optical speedometer, rate of roll indicator, indicated airspeed calculator and his famed bombsights. Wimperis was commissioned as a
lieutenant in the
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve on 7 September 1915. Starting in 1915 Wimperis worked in the Experimental Office in the
Royal Navy Air Service (RNAS). Here he was put on the problem of devising a useful
bombsight that did not require manual calculations or a
stopwatch to estimate the
wind speed. The result was his
Drift Sight, which used a small bar that was aligned with the motion of objects on the ground to measure the wind. He then greatly expanded on this design in his
Course Setting Bomb Sight (CSBS) in 1917, introducing the first system to allow bomb runs from any direction, instead of just up or down the wind line. The CSBS has been called "the most important bombsight of the war". Wimperis remained with air service as it merged into the
Royal Air Force in 1918, and the
Air Ministry as it took over most of the centralised research for both arms. He was appointed Director of Scientific Research in the Air Ministry in 1925. In June 1934,
Albert Percival Rowe, Wimperis' personal assistant, became concerned about the state of air defence in the UK, and took it upon himself to read every study on the topic published in the UK. The result was a memo stating that "we were likely to lose the war if it starts within the next ten years". Wimperis took the memo seriously and set about creating the
Committee for the Scientific Study of Air Defence, placing
Henry Tizard in the chairman's position. This group was instrumental in the creation of
radar in the UK, and the
Chain Home system that was instrumental to winning the
Battle of Britain. In 1938 Wimperis served as the aeronautical advisor to the
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research of the Commonwealth of Australia, advising them on setting up their own aeronautical research division. He served as president of the
Royal Aeronautical Society, 1936–1938, Wimperis died in
Edinburgh on 16 July 1960 at the age of 83. ==Honours==