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colleges of the British Isles. Its success led to the holding of another
school on a much bigger scale in 1936, when the attendance of over
200 included also science and careers masters of schools and representatives
of the Board of Education and local education authorities. As a
result the Board asked the Company to join in the organization of
their own summer school for teachers in technical colleges; this,
usually held at New College, Oxford, was in 1938 translated to the
Trafford Park works, and the whole of the lectures were given by members
of the Company's staff. Another summer school is planned for 1950.
By 1937 the works school had grown so far beyond its small beginnings
twentyfour years before that it was found mutually advantageous
for it to be recognized by the Board of Education under the auspices
of the Lancashire education authority.
RESEARCH
The growing amount and scope of research work necessitated a number
of extensions, particularly to the high voltage laboratory, which
was relied upon at first for commercial testing at the higher voltages.
Not until the testing departments in various parts of the works
were more fully equipped could the laboratory give more time to
its proper work of fundamental and applied research. By 1933 electrical
surge or impulse generators had been constructed experimentally
for voltages up to three million (in an oil immersed unit). In 1937
the discharge capacitance of the permanent laboratory equipment
was increased fivefold by the installation of a two million volt
equipment, which replaced the original one million volt generator;
this greatly augmented the amount of testing energy available.
From 1927 to 1930 the h.v. laboratory had been in charge of B.
L. Goodlet, who had started as a trade apprentice at the Sheffield
works. Since 1937, except for interludes in the chair of electrical
engineering at Birmingham and in charge of degaussing work for the
South African Navy, Goodlet has been professor of electrical engineering
at the University of Cape Town. He was elected F.R.S.S.A. in 1948.
Goodlet was succeeded by T. E. Allibone, a former apprentice who
had continued his course at Sheffield University, working on the
preparation of rare metals and alloys and later gaining a research
scholarship at Cambridge. Allibone persuaded Lord Rutherford to
let him work at the Cavendish laboratory on problems of high voltages
in vacuum, and following this work J. D. Cockcroft, also an ex-M-V
apprentice and former member of the research staff, and E. T. S.
Walton went on to their epoch-making achievement of 'splitting the
atom'.
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