Expert for Arapuni

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1060, 26 August 1930, Page 8

Expert for Arapuni

Swedish Engineer Begins Work on Thursday Special to THE SUN WELLINGTON, Today. ON Thursday Professor P. J. Hornell will arrive at Arapuni to begin liis investigations regarding the trouble there, lie is an engineering expert from Stockholm, Sweden, and reached Wellington yesterday by the Makura. Had the invitation of the New Zealand Government reached him in Sweden a day later than it did, Professor Hornell would have been on his way to Russia to report on a big hydro-electric undertaking there.

The professor is a member of the biggest firm of consulting engineers in Europe. It has a staff of 50 graduated engineers and over 80 assistants. This firm was started in 1900 by Professor Hornell and Professor Richert, and began with a staff of three.

In the engineering world Professor Hornell holds a distinguished position and his services have been obtained by the Governments of many countries. He is chairman of the League of Nations Committee on Water Power Development, and the representative of Sweden on the International River (Oder) Commission and other,commit-

tees under the League of “Nations. In 1920 he was appointed by the Swedish Government to take part in the work of organising the League of Nations Committee on Communications and Transport. The firm with which Professor Hornell is associated began by specialising in three departments supply, canals and water-power development, with particular attention to the last named. Later other departments were added, such as communi-

cations, which included harbours, railways and canals. The firm’s work has extended to Norway, Russia. Finland, Poland, the Far East, the Malay States, Greece, Rumania and Africa; but its principal work has been in Sweden, the home of hydro-electric power.

At certain periods between 1906 and 1929, Professor Hornell was on the professorial staff of the University of Technology in Stockholm. His subjects tvere hydraulic engineering, structural building, materials and allied engineering subjects. He resigned his position there in 1929 because of the pressure of wider and more interesting work. Plans for a water-power plant at Halvredsfossen, Norway, were completed by himself and Professor Richert in 1901. These won an international prize and focussed attention on the two engineers. In 1905 the two professors again won a prize for plans for extending the harbour at Gothenberg, and in 1902 they had secured the only prize awarded for a project of constructing a series of canals at Leningrad.

Professor Hornell has been engaged in many giant engineering projects. Before the war he was engaged on a huge dam scheme at Vladivostock; but the outbreak of war caused this project to be postponed. He has also been asked by the League of Nations to give consideration to the question of Danzig as a port of Poland. From 1922 to 1928 he acted as consulting engineer for the erection of a power plant of 70,000 k.w. at Volkov, in Russia, and when that work was completed he embarked on another 90,000 k.w. plant on the River Sver. This last scheme is still under the eye of Professor Hornell. China and Japan were visited in 1908. For two years the professor inquired into the development of the port of Shanghai, and a report was presented to an International Commission sitting there in 1921. Professor Hornell has been five times through the Suez Canal, three times to Siberia and six times through the Bosphorus. He is accompanied in New Zealand by Mr. P. W. Werner, his secretary and assistant engineer.