Merchant aircraft carriers were not one person's invention

Did Douglas Thomson originate the idea of converting merchant ships into aircraft carriers?

He was important to advancing the scheme, but the concept had many commercial and Admiralty contributors and a much longer history.

Douglas Thomson and other commercial shipping figures helped advance merchant-carrier ideas that had already appeared in wartime and interwar proposals. Related schemes also came from naval air and trade officials, petroleum-industry managers, and shipbuilders. Naval constructors and the Third Sea Lord's organisation had maintained lists of merchant ships suitable for naval conversion from the late 1920s. First World War conversions such as Argus provided an earlier institutional precedent. The concept emerged from accumulated design and administrative work over many years.