NEW ALLOY WANTED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 213, 3 May 1932, Page 7

NEW ALLOY WANTED

MYSTERY OF ELECTRICITY SOLVED BY SCIENTIST IN CANADA. ■ PERFECT CONDUCTOR. Dr. J. C. McLennan, of the University of Toronto, after nine years .of unrelenting research, claims to have unravelled a mystery which has baffled scientists for decades — how an electrie current passes through metal. One of the most moimentous applications of the discovery will be, he 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 cass, with certain pure metals. These alloys were made into rings and carried an undiminished flow of current for some hours. The only handicap to be overcome before all el :ctrical transmission equipment in the world, beeomes ob- ; solete is, Dr. McLennan claims, the production of an alloy which will be a perfect, or nearly perfect, conductor at ordinary temperatures. Millions of dollars would be saved every year in Canada if the perfect alloy 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 de- | clared that the discovery will upsefc the present trend of industrial and social history. "No longer," he said, "will large factories have to be situated near sites where the water -power is great, removed far from the centres of population. Electricity will he carried hundreds of miles, if need be, to the centres of population. Power manufaetured in the northern wilderness es of Canada will be made available in cities a thousand miles south." Dr. McLennan, who will shortly retire from the University of Toronto and go to live in Britain, is one of Canada's foremost scientists. He was born in Ontario in 1867, the son of David McLennan, of Aberdeenshire. He was educated at Toronto and Cambridge, and has been director of the physical- laboi'atory at Toronto since 1914. He was - scientific adviser to the British Admiralty in 1919. Professor E. N. Da Costa Andrade, professor of physics at London University, told a Daily Mail reporter: "Professor McLennan's discovery opens up possibilities of a new era in electrical science. If he discovers the perfect alloy it will have the profoundest influnce on the whole electrical industry. Not only would wires made of such an alloy prevent all leakage, but also they would be far thinner 'than anything at present in use. With the perfect alloy a whole city might be lit with a wire no thicker than my finger."