Hinton was one of the most distinguished engineers of his day. Beginning as a sixteen-year-old apprentice with the Great Western Railway at Swindon, he gained first class honors at Cambridge, then worked for Brunner Mond (later ICI) being seconded to the Ministry of Supply during the Second World War. In 1946 he was appointed Deputy Controller of Production, Atomic Energy, and in 1954 Member for Engineering and Production when the Atomic Energy Authority was formed. His organization was responsible for designing and building the factory at Springfield for extracting uranium, for building Windscale with its production piles and complex chemical plants, the diffusion plants at Capenhurst, the first industrial nuclear plant at Calder Hall and the fast breeder reactor at Dounreay. In 1957 Hinton became the first chairman of the newly-created Central Electricity Generating Board. Following the conferment of a Life Peerage in 1965 he was an active member of the House of Lords, and a highly successful first Chancellor of the University of Bath. A member of many engineering organizations and institutions, he was President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and of the Council of Engineering Institutions, and from 1976 to 1981 the first President of the Fellowship of Engineering which he had done so much to establish.