Archibald Reith Low

Archibald "Archie" Reith Low, MA (Cantab) FRAeS (31 December 1878, in Aberdeen – 21 January 1969) was a British pilot and aeronautics pioneer. He designed the Vickers F.B.5. and Vickers E.F.B.1. According to Mervyn O'Gorman, Low coined the term "drag" to refer to aerodynamic drag.

Life
Low was one of eight children of his father, a Church of Scotland minister and Jane Stuart Reith, aunt to Lord Reith. He was educated at George Watson's College and Edinburgh University, and at Clare College, Cambridge.

Low held the rank of Second Lieutenant in the City of London Imperial Volunteers. He held the rank of Acting Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve attached to the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). When on 1 April 1918, the RNAS was merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps to form the Royal Air Force (the world's first independent air force), he held the rank of Major (in the Royal Air Force). He had therefore held a commission in all three services. The new rank structure for the RAF was not introduced into the RAF until 4 Aug 1919, following inter-service squabbling in the wake of massive post-war defence cuts, which reached a new low when the Army and Navy refused to allow the RAF to use their officer ranks, forcing Trenchard to create new ones. The new rank titles (Pilot Officer, Flight Lieutenant etc.) came into being on this date. So Low, having been retired before then, continued to call himself "Major A R Low, RAF" despite, in the early 1920s, it is believed that a directive was issued that the old ranks were no longer to be used and that the new ranks were to be used instead. He was awarded the star (S.), Victory (V.) Medal and the British War Medal (BS.).; they were irreverently known as Pip, Squeak and Wildfred, respectively.

Publications

 * 1) Normal Elliptic Functions (University of Toronto Press 1950)