Valuable Records Lost In Fire

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30561, 2 October 1964, Page 3

Valuable Records Lost In Fire

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, October 1. An irreplaceable collection of scientific records, the product of nearly three years work, was destroyed at Ardmore early this morning by a fire at the Auckland University radio research centre.

The records, the only information of its type available from the Southern Hemisphere, were from studies of the ionosphere, using signals from satellites. The equipment used, designed ana built at the station, has been copied in several other parts of the world where similar research is being carried out. For the last two years, scientists have been analysing the records and in the next few months the full results of work to date were to have been published. But the results, product of many hundreds of hours of tedious work, have been lost as well as the original records.

The only records not lost were from a station at Invercargill—these were in Wellington on the night of the fire—but the analyses of these records went up in smoke, with the other records and results and about £lOOO worth of specially-designed equipment.

The cause of the fire is not known. “This is really disheartening,” said Dr. J. E. Titheridge, senior research fellow at the centre, who has been in charge of ionosphere work. “We can rebuild the equipment, and we will have to, as soon as possible, but we can never replace the records and data which were unique.” The Ardmore centre has built up an excellent overseas reputation for its satellite studies, and its work has received substantial support from the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration.