TO REPORT ON ARAPUNI.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 201, 26 August 1930, Page 10

TO REPORT ON ARAPUNI.

SPECIALIST FROM SWEDEN.

MANY WORLD-WIDE JAUNTS.

LEAGUE "OF NATIONS-EXPERT,

(By Telegraph.—Own.. Correspondent.)

WELLINGTON, this day

Professor' P. J. Hornell', of : Sweden, who-has been appointed by the Government to report upon the position at. Arapuni, arrived by the Makura to-day. With him came Mr. P. W. Werner, as assistant engineer and • secretary. . Professor Hornell, when interviewed, said that h& was unable to say anything regarding his plans for the examination of the Arapuni" development.

That Professor Hornell is an engineer of very wide experience was made clear by a recital of some of the main works and investigations with which he has been associated. About 1900, said P f O" fessor Hornell, he worked with a'n. .old friend of his, Professor Ricliert, in the organisation of a bureau of consulting engineers, which grew from a small .staff of three or four engineers to. its. present position of the largest firm of consulting engineers in Europe, with 50 -graduated engineers and a staff of over 80, with its head office in Stockholm and a branch office in London. The firm specialised at the beginning in three main departments, water supply, canalisation and water power development. To these have been added a department of communications, which embraced harbours, and railways. Its main activities are in Sweden, but its work has extended far and wide, to Norway, Finland, Russia, Poland and the Far East, Greece and Rumania, Spitzbergen, Africa and the Federated Malay States. From 1906 until 1929, said Professor Hornell, he was for certain periods a member of 'the staff of the University of Technology; Stockholm, lecturing on livdraulic engineering, structural building and materials, and'allied engineering subjects. In-1925 he became- a, professor of the same university,' but he had resigned in 1929, as lecturing--rendered difficult the wider and more interestingfield work in Sweden and elsewhere. In 1901, in collaboration with Professor Richcrt, he worked out plans for a water power plant at Halvredsfosseiy Norway, gaining ton national V prize^v'and'* i in

1905 he gained the first prize, against about 40 competitors, for plans for an extension of the harbour of Gothenburg. As lie had said, the firm's activities came under several main headings and though his position was at the head of one particular section, practical considerations made'it imperative that he should attend to different classes of engineering for .on his world-wide travels many points cropped up. Big Works in Russia. To ■ mention; some of those widely,- ; separated-works, said Professor Ho'rnell, there- was a! <lam project at Vladivostock, with .which he was ' concerned, but it was postponed on account of the ;waiv He was commissioned to' give consideration under the League-of: Nations to. the question of Danzig as a port for Poland.. He acted as consulting engineer from 1922 or 1923 till 1928 for the erection of a power plant of 80,000 k.w. at Volkov, Russia, and on the completion of that work plans'were undertaken for a 90,000 k.w. plant at Swir. In 1908, he continued, he was "over to China and Japan," and other little jaunts mentioned were five trips. through the Suez Canal, three to Siberia and six oyer; the Bosphorus. . Inquiry in China. One of , his commissions in the East, said Professor.Hornell, was to inquire into the development of the .' international port of Shanghai. That work occupied twq years/and the report was submitted to' the international commission in Shanghai in 1921, the representatives including those of England, the United. States of America, France, Holland and Japan. He himself was appointed as China's representative. Such work as this, he added, covered rather wider scope than that of engineering. In 1920 he was appointed by the Swedish Government to take part in the'preparatory work in the setting up of the League of Nations Committee on Communications and Transit. He is chair - | man-.of...the League of Nations Committee,, on Water . Power Development and -representative of Sweden on the International Oder River Commission.

■ Professor Hornell agreed that his work took him ( . here and there, with long distances,between those places and very often at Very short notice, Irit one got used to, that. ! On one oee: •'■■ ahe had returned home to Stockholm after a considerable absence, to be ordered off that same afternoon to Russia. Mrs. Hornell took it philosophically. "It's just as well," she had said, "there will be no packing. You-have-not-unpacked yet."