Willy Christian Simonsen (13 September 1913 – 4 December 2003) was a Norwegian engineer and business founder. He was born in Kristiania as a son of chemist (1867–1918) and Alice Sophia Andersen (1877–1969). He finished his secondary education at Hegdehaugen School in 1933, and graduated in electrical engineering from the Dresden University of Technology in 1938. He worked as an engineer for Elektrisk Bureau and Chr. Michelsen Institute. During the German occupation of Norway from 1940 he was involved in the Norwegian resistance movement where he cooperated with fellow engineers Odd Dahl and to wiretap German forces. This was discovered and Simonsen was arrested by Gestapo, but admitted to Ullevål Hospital from which he escaped. He fled to the United Kingdom, where he started working in t