James Martin (engineer)
Northern Irish aerospace engineer and co-founder of Martin-Baker
Sir James Martin (11 September 1893 – 5 January 1981) was a British engineer who together with Captain Valentine Baker founded the Martin-Baker aircraft company, which is a leading producer of aircraft ejection seats.
Life
James Martin was born 11 September 1893 in the townland of Killinchy-in-the-Woods, known locally as Killinchy Woods (birthplace on what is now called Glasswater Road), Crossgar, County Down in Ireland. He established his own engineering firm in 1929.
In 1934, he and Valentine Baker formed Martin-Baker; Captain Baker took the test pilot role. It was in a crash of their third design, the MB 3, that Baker was killed.
In 1964 Martin was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Aero Club.
In 2004, Martin was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.
Commemoration
Martin's contribution to engineering was commemorated by the Northern Bank in its Inventor series of banknotes, which featured his portrait on the bank's £100 note. The note was discontinued in 2013 when the bank reissued its banknotes under the new Danske Bank brand.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “James Martin (engineer)” as northern Irish aerospace engineer and co-founder of Martin-Baker. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as northern Irish aerospace engineer and co-founder of Martin-Baker. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6138999. VIAF identifies the subject as 62359397. The Library of Congress control number is n97056124. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1893, 1981, 1929 and 1934.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Martin (engineer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.