DEFEATING THE U-BOAT MENACE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 148, 24 April 1942, Page 7

DEFEATING THE U-BOAT MENACE

New Zealander’s Successful Invention

in a hardware shop in Dunedin forty years ago, is to-day helping the American Navy to solve one of its toughest problems — complete secrécy regarding the whereabouts of merchant ships at sea. He is E. H. Scott, 51-year-old president of the E. H. Scott Radio Laboratories ef Chicago, builders of the Scott radio, which has a reputation in the United States as one of the highest quality receivers on the market. . NEW ZEALANDER who worked

His latest invention, now being put to good use by the United States Navy, is a receiving set which will not oscillate and betray a ship’s presence. Many oldstyle receiving sets on American ships were built in Great War days, and their oscillations are capable of warning any submarine within 25 miles. The problem was put to the radio manufacturers of America, and Mr. Scott can boast that his laboratories were the only ones to solve it. E. H. Scott .was born in Dunedin

in 1889, and was educated at the South Kensington School. Both his parents died when he was quite young, and at the age of 14 he left school to work in hardware stores, continuing, however, with night classes at the Dunedin Technical College. He was a mechanically-minded lad, and saved up his money to buy a motor-cycle, a vehicle which was even then capturing the imagination of youths with a flair for mechanics and a craving for speed. It was the fourth motor-cycle imported into New Zealand and on it he won one of the first motor-cycle races held in Dunedin. In 1907, he decided to see the world, and as a start worked his way to England. In Coventry he got a job in a motor works, and was_ successively mechanic, car tester, and car and chassis examiner.» Meanwhile he was studying combustion engine design, hoping to advance still further to a position as engine designer. But he became homesick and. returned to New Zealand to marry a Dunedin girl and take a job managing the Canterbury branch of a cash register company. The outbreak of war found him in Australia with the same firm, and in 1915 he enlisted with the Third Australian Division and served in France on the Somme until the end of the war. First Successful Invention It was while he was in the Army that he had his first success as an inventor, his invention being a device to locate trouble in petrol engines. It was adopted extensively by the United States Army, and the lucky inventor came out of the deal 56,000 dollars to the good. After the Armistice he went to America to commercialise his invention, and as a sideline wrote articles on automobile care and, in book form, sold 100,000 copies. In 1920 he turned to radio, writing a daily article for the same group of newspapers which carried his automobile articles. He originated the system of pictorial wiring diagrams without which the many radio journals which flourished during the adolescence of radio in America would have been unable to explain to amateurs how to build receivers at home. Return to New Zealand In 1922, Mr. Scott returned to New Zealand, bringing with him a receiving set which he had just designed. Before leaving he had arranged with WGN and WQJ, two Chicago stations, to send out a special test programme, notice of which was given to amateurs throughout Australia and New Zealand. Mr. Scott’s receiver was the only one to log programmes from both stations. With this set, he discovered, it was a simple matter to pick up American stations in New Zealand every night in the week-this in days when reception of stations 1,000 miles away was creditable, and reception over 6,000 and 9,000 miles was a phenomenon, While it was in New Zealand Mr. Scott’s receiver put up four world records. Back in the United States Mr. Scott found that these records had attracted wide attention, and the upshot was that he went into the radio business, with a lad of 16 and himself as the entire staff.

And so started a business that has grown into a world-wide organisation, with owners of Scott receivers in 153 foreign countries. Recently, when he has not been busy making equipment for the United States military forces, Mr. Scott has been acting as chairman of the Mid-west Division of the Anzac War Relief Fund, which collects money for comforts for New Zealanders and Australians on active service. Last Christmas money was cabled to the New Zealand Patriotic Fund for 1,200 Christmas parcels and 120,000 cigarettes. Still very much a New Zealander at heart, Mr. Scott had practically completed arrangements to retire from business and return to the Dominion when war broke out. Retirement is now a distant dream.