ALLAN FERGUSON , D.Sc. (Assistant Professor of Physics, Queen Mary
College)
The many' amenities brought into our lives by scientific discoveries have become so much a matter of course that we pay little attention to them-until something goes wrong. Still less do we consider the concentrated effort that has been expended in generations of patient research to provide these amenities.
What a fascinating story, for example, is that of gas, from its first faint flickerings more than a century ago, when the peace of Amiens was made the occasion of the illumination of the Soho foundries, to the position today, when gas provides efficient light for our rooms, cooks our meals, contributes towards the solution of the smoke-problem in cities, and provides us with by-products essential to many important industries, and tq the comforts of our daily lives.
Storage, purification, transport, measurement : think of the problems involved in the supply of gas to such cities as London and Manchester-problems solved so quietly and efficiently that we, as consumers, hardly give them a thought.