NEW ELECTRICITY ERA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 16 April 1932, Page 11

NEW ELECTRICITY ERA

SCIENTIST’S DISCOVERY THE PERFECT CONDUCTOR SAYING MILLIONS Dr J. C. McLennan, of the University 'of Toronto, after nine years of unrelenting research, claims to have uni ravelled a mystery which has baffled I scientists for decades —how an electric jcufirreut' passes through metal. One of the most momentous applications of the ' discovery will be, lie claims, the production of an alloy which will be a perfect conductor of electricity. Already Dr McLennan has found combinations of metals which have proved perfect conductors, although ’their temperatures have been higher 'than is the case with certain pure j metals. These alloys were made into | rings and carried an undiminishdd flow , of current for some hours, i THE PERFECT ALLOY The only handicap to be overcome 'before all electrical transmission equipment in the world becomes obsolete is. Dr McLennan claims, tbo production of an alloy which will be a perfect, or nearly perfect, conductor at ordinary temperatures. Millions of dollars would be saveci every year in Canada if the perfect allpy was forthcoming. It would mean an end of the tremendous waste which occurs through the drop in potential of current carried a considerable distance. A prominent Canadian scientist declared that the discovery will upset ■tbo present trend of industrial ajid ! social history. “No longer,” lie said, “will large factories have to be situated near sites where the water-power is great, removed far from the centres of j population. Electricity will be carried hundreds of miles, if need be, to the ■centres of population. Power manufactured in the northern wildernesses of : Canada will ho made available in cities la thousand miles south.” I Dr McLennan, who will shortly . retire from Hie University of Toronto and Igo to live in Britain, is ono of Canada-’s i foremost scientists. He was born in [Ontario in 1867, the son of David Mc- ! Leiman, of Aberdeenshire. lie was [educated at Toronto and Cambridge, (and has boon director of. the physical laboratory at Toronto since 1904. He was scientific adviser to the British Admiralty in 1919. Professor E. N. Da Costa Andrade, professor of physics at London UniIversify, told a “Daily Mail” reporter:--

(“Professor McLennan’s discovery opens up possibilities of a now era in elecitrical science. Tf lie discovers the perfect alloy it will have the profouiidesl influence on the whole electrical industry. Not only would wires made of ' such an alloy prevent all leakage, but 1 also' they would he far thinner than anything used at present. With the perfect alloy a whole city might be lit with a wire no thicker than my finger.”