USELESS WAR INVENTIONS

Evening Star, Issue 23657, 17 August 1940, Page 14

USELESS WAR INVENTIONS

DIFFICULTIES NOT REALISED Since the war _ began, Sin George _ Julius, chairman of th«i Australian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, has beert offered thousands of war-time in-* ventions. Of these, 99.99 per cent* were utterly useless, he told the ‘ Aw gus.’ The lot of the inventor has, never been harder than it is in the present! war. In wars of the past inventors have had to contend with the conservatism of officialdom. To-day they are faced with the much more obdurate conservatism inherent in the complex modern system of production. “ When I say that 99.99 per cent, ot inventions offered to us are useless, Jl do not mean to suggest that they are all of the Heath Robinson type, although many of them Sir George Julius explained. “ Quite a number of them are ingenious and practical enough, or might prove to be so if we had unlimited time to develop them. “ But most inventors fail to realise the enormous amount of work involved in adopting anything new to-day- Preliminary tests and experiments may well occupy six months or more, and, then, before the new device can be put! into production, a minor revolution in. factory organisation becomes necessary* New tools have to be designed, built* tested, and installed. And the tool* of modern are_ enormously, complex and expensive pieccs_ of. machinery, the production of which itself might take months or oven years.. . “You might think inventors would realise all this,” Sir Georg© Julius con-, tinned, “ but many of them, of course* are not technicians themselves. They are clerks, civil servants, lawyers, doctors—anything. . “ The only invention that has chance of playing any part in this war: is the kind that can be manufactured' with existing tools and equipment., There are a few like that among thousands of ideas we receive. When one arrives it is immediately sent on to tlia proper people, with a recommendation that it should be tried out. „ “ One invention of that kind that: may prove of immense value is being tested now.”