ENGINEER AND INVENTOR.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18018, 5 November 1920, Page 8

ENGINEER AND INVENTOR.

ENTERPRISING AUCKLANDER. IMPORTANT INVENTION. An interesting instance of the manner in which New Zealanders so often attain distinction and success in * distant. parts* of the world is provided in the career of an kkucklander, Mr J. H. Morton, A.M.1.M.E., who has just returned to the northern city after an absence of 25 years. Mr Morton belongs to a well-known Bay of Plenty family, and is a brother of the late Mary Morton Masters, the well-known animal painter. Serving his apprenticeship in Auckland al Messrs George Fraser's foundry and the Newmarket railway workships, he left Auckland for England upon completing his time, and at the age of 22 was elected a graduate member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, London. Since then he has been associated with many important enterprises in connection with railway locomotive and workshop construction in various parts of the world, Including the erection for the Buenos Aires railways of the largest workshops in the Southern Hemisphere. At the outbreak of war, Mr Morton was practising as a consulting and industrial engineer in Oregon, and was also working on an invention of his own, an apparatus for the artificial drying of fruit. War broke out just as the first successful plants were going into operation, foreshadowing a revolution in the industry of fruit and vegetable preserving. Early in 1916. he went to Vancouver, and offered his services to Mr George Barnes, M.P., at that time engaged on a Canadian recruiting mission for armament labour to serve in Great Britain. Mr Morton collected 250 mechanics, and took them to England, where he offered his services and his dehydrating invention to the British Government., the latter royally free. At that time, however, the shortage of munitions was Britain's most urgent problem, and it was in his capacity of engineer, instead of as inventor, that Mr Morton performed his first war service. He was at once appointed assistant engineer to the Metropolitan Munitions Committee, and shortly afterwards joined the staff of Woolwich Arsenal as inspection officer.

In 1916 he resigned from the Munitions Department, in order to join the Board of Agriculture and Food Control Department, the German submarine at that time having rendered the food supply one of England’s gravest problems. It was in his capacity of inventor that he was now able to render valuable service, being appointed to supervise and direct the important work of drying and preserving vegetables for the use of British and French troops. Very little was know-n of the science of dehydration at that time, and the Government was induced to carry out exhaustive and elaborate tests, which proved the value of -Mr Morton’s invention. Plants were accordingly established in Kent and other counties, with a drying capacity of 25 tons of fresh vegetables a week. Meantime the value of the. new process had been established in another important direction, that of flax drying; a linen famine had to be nieL and the Government was using every effort to stimulate the flax industry in England and Scotland, the fibre being urgently required for the manufacture of aeroplane wingsHighly satisfactory results were obtained, and Mr Morton was given a contract for 17 dehydrating installations in various parts of Great Britain. The results constituted something of a revolution in the industry, for whereas it formerly took from two to three days of fine weather to dry the flax in the fields, it could now be dried more effectively on the machines in two hours.