GERMAN WHO FOILED THE MAGNETIC MINE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 178, 26 June 1940, Page 2

GERMAN WHO FOILED THE MAGNETIC MINE

The Admiralty have been able to minimise the magnetic mine menaco, and by a strange irony the remedy is due to a discovery of a famous German scientist. Here is the story as told by the leader writer of the Glasgow Herald. "Nazi Germany, like the rest of the world, was amazed when the / Cunarder Queen Elizabeth made her J)successful dash across the Atlantic, but Hitler and his followers must have been even more taken aback when they learned that the great ship was associated with the name of' a famous German. "As revealed shortly after the Cunarder's arrival in NV\v York, the girdle, known as 'The D.G. equipment,' fitted on the Queen Elizabeth and other vessels in Britain's reply to the Nazi magnetic mines and scientists are confident that a ship so equipped is effectively tiemagnetised and immune from the perils of Hitler's much-vaunted secret weapon. "Those who were privileged lo J •witness the Queen Elizabeth going | down the Clyde the- - ship had a cable her at main-deck level. It is this cable carrying a current of electricity which is known as the 'D.G.' device, or the de-Gaussing girdle. "Karl Friedrich Gauss, one of the greatest German mathematicians of the .nineteenth century, was respon sible for fundamental discoveries in magnetic theory, and as a com-> pliment to him his name was given to a magnetic unit just as ohm, ampere, volt, and watt are the electrical units of resistance, current, po-. tential difference, and power, named after great pioneers in physics ami engineering. "Gauss's name, in small letters, signifies magnetic flux density* Accordingly, to a new device having the effect of nullifying the magnetic flux, and being in the form cf a girdle round the ship,/it was na(Gontinued foot previous column)