NEW RESEARCH IN AUSTRALIA

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22335, 24 February 1938, Page 11

NEW RESEARCH IN AUSTRALIA

SECONDARY INDUSTRIES AERONAUTICAL LABORATORY PLANNED The success of the Australian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in its work for primary industries has influenced the Government to turn its attention to work for secondary industries, according to the chairman of the council, Sir George Julius, who is visiting his father, Archbishop Julius, in Christchurch. After two years’ effort plans had been completed for research in secondary industries, he said in an interview last evening. With this end in view it had been decided to establish an aeronautical research laboratory, to cost £150,000; a fundamental standards laboratory, to cost £90,000; and a laboratory for general engineering and test work, to cost £30,000. The aeronautical laboratory was a new thing, and had arisen out of the decision of the Commonwealth to build, as far as possible, its own aircraft. For the laist few months Australia had had the services of the head of the air research depart- ; ment of the British Government towards the establishment of the aeronautical laboratory. The laboratory would be established- at Melbourne, where the aircraft factory was situated, but the chair would probably be established at Sydney. The standards laboratory would probably be situated at Sydney. The engineering laboratory was also . a new venture. Australian expenditure on primary production research had been about £ 260,000 annually, and the new work would mean that the cost of research would be increased enormously. However, the achievements over the last 12 years had convinced the Government that the work was worth while. SJir George Julius said that the great difficulty in research work was its expense in relation to the population of a country. It cost just as much to solve a problem where the population was 1000 as where it was 1,000,000. Australia’s population was small enough when the work was* viewed from that aspect, but the position was not so bad as it was in New Zealand, where the population was much smaller.