DEHYDRATION.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 773, 6 October 1922, Page 5

DEHYDRATION.

GREAT INTEREST TAKEN. i PLANT MAY BE ESTABLISHED, IN PUKEKOHE. Great interest is being manifested in the (forthcoming lecture on the great posibilities of running a dehydrating plant in Pukekohe to be given at the Carnival Tea Rooms on Tuesday evening next 10th inst. Every grower, every business man, every housewife is interested and should be present. /The exhibit of dehydrated products alone warrants inspection.

To show the standing which Mr Morton, the haq, we have pleasure in reprinting an article from the British Australasian : ‘•Mr J. iH. Morton industrial engineer. the designer and patentee of the well-known drying apparatus, “The Morton Efficiency Evaporator/’ contemplates taking a holiday trip to Australia after l an absence in Europe, South and North America, of 25 years The son and grandson of a master mariner, Mr Mo'rton has followed his profession in several countries and the wide experience he gained thejre enabled him in recent years to develop and complete the apparatus which bears his name

Mr Morton’s grandfather Captain Digby Berkeley Morton, was the son of the Dublin shipbuilder who is eputed to have built the first steel ship in Ireland. He sailed the seven taking with him his son, Berke. ley Digby Mortoni, visiting Australia in the ’fifties ; and when he retired frpm the sea became chairman of the Shipmasters’ Association at Liverpool, and was offered the command of the “Great Eastern” when- she was He was afterwards interested in the starting of the Conway training ship. Captain Berkeley D. Morton the father of Mfa J. H, Morton who commanded some of the finest passenger steamers of his day, took out his family to the Kati Katt Settlement in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, in the late ’seventies, and after some years of farming, taught schools under the Native Department for many years one of his last schools being Otorohanga in the King Country the last native district settled by the whites. Mr Kenneth Morton, an uncle, is a wellknown farmer near Kati Kati, and a brother, Mr A. B. Morton, a prosperous dairy faffmeh at Papamoa. Tepuke. The older generation of New Zealanders will remember the late Mary E. Morton Masters (a sister of Mr Morton), who was one qf the best known colonial animal painters of her day, and painted many thorugh. fejred horses in New Zealand, principally those owned by Mr Douglas McLean, Mr. Tom Morrin, Mr G, N. Pharazyn, and. others. Born at Grange Mount Cheshire. Mr Morton made the voyage to New Zealand; when he was four years of age went to school at Taupanga, and began his engineering studies in Auckland, where he seirved his apprenticeship at Fraser’s foundry and the Newmarket railway shops. Going later, to England he worked! first at Manchester, erecting new locomoand afterwards at the Great Western Railway workshops at Swindon as a draughtsman. He was elected a Graduate Member of tne Institute of Mechanical Engineers, Londbn at the age of 22. Subsequently Mr Morton’s professional engagements took him to tne Argentine for several years and later to Cuba and Peru. fie also visited western United States and Canada. In Buenos Aires he worked out the plans for two extensive rail way workshops ,which together cost £1 000,000. While on 'the way to Havana to take up a position, he was offered the post of workshops manager in New York'of the first underground electric railway in that city, a position which, however ne was unable then to accept. Six months later he undertook the preparation qf the plans for the Engineering Department for a large extension to a locomotive manufacturing plant in New York State. In Montreal he designed- and (installed the principal workshops of the Canadian Pacific Railway; it was . some years ia't.er in Peru that he superintended the erecfiioqj and trial trip of a large number of locomotives for a railway through the Andes, While practising as a, consulting and industrial engineer in the west of the United‘States, before the war, Mr Morton began to' pay serious attention to the problem of evolving a highly efficient commercial 'fruit, dlrying apparatus, so badly needed. War broke out when the first successful plants were going into operation but Mr Morton left his business and family in the Far West to join the British Mission of Inquiry into Armament Labour, B itish Columbia, in 1915 'and as a supervisor, conducted a party of 250 skilled mechanics to England He next became assistant to the Chief Engineer, Metropolitan Munitions Committee London, and late/r an inspection officer on the technical staff of the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich. In January, 1916 he was sent as a member of the Woolwich staff to the U n >t/d States .having charge there, under the Philadelphia area of a large sub-district, from which were sent many thousand tons of steel and other war munitions. After two years on this work Mr Morton applied to be returned to England!, to renew an offer previously made 'to the Board of Agriculture of his invention for the preservation of fruit and vegetables royalty free, for the duration of the war. When he returned for that purpose he was attached to the techninal staff of the Board qf Agriculture as supervising engineer., S.E. Section Kent, for its vegetable preservation scheme, and there after installing miscellaneous appartus previously purchased, he was instructed to design and instal one of his own “Efficiency Evaporators/’ which was latdr subjected to elaborate tests by the Test Branch His Majesty’s Office of Works, both for vegetables and for drying flax straw. This dryer

worked upon, vegetables for the British, and later foi) the French armies for the British and later system, being later adopted widely in connection with the Government flax factories erected in England and Scotland during' the wafr, r>nd it seems to be destined to become a milestone in the development of the flax and linen industry of Europe. This interesting appartus was primarily designed for drying fruit and vegetables, but after many official tests it has proved to be a most accurately regulated and efficient eva. porator,'and as sucty. can be used f()r a widen, variety of purposes ; an installation now being erected in Yorkshire being probably the largest commercial dryer in the wdrid, Mr Morton’s last year of wa," work with the British Government was as chief assistant to Mr George Weymouth a well-known Melbourne manufacturing engineer who then acted as Assistant-Director of Engineering of the Ministry of Food- Having safely launched his invention in the Ur*ited Kingdom since the armistice, Mr Morton is eager to fedum to New Zealand to rejoin fits wife, a Canadian lady, and his five children, who have preceded him there and to see his mother again a fine old lady who belongs to an interesting group of pioneers of the Dominion. Mrs Morton who is 76 years off age fives with her daughter, Mrs Rupert Stevenson, at Pukekohe,. Waikato. After a holiday in New Zealand, Mr Morton will proceed to establish his commercial dryers in various parts of tjie world.