Some recent developments at the National Physical Laboratory

1962 ◽  
Vol 265 (1321) ◽  
pp. 141-160
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
National Physical Laboratory ◽  
Industrial Research ◽  
Scientific Policy ◽  
Governing Body ◽  
Physical Laboratory ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Creation

When the National Physical Laboratory was founded in 1900, the Royal Society was ‘invited to control the proposed institution and to nominate a governing body’. Since the Royal Society had agitated strongly for the creation of such a laboratory, this invitation was accepted, and although the National Physical Laboratory was incorporated into the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research when that body was created in 1917, the connexion between the Royal Society and the National Physical Laboratory is still very close on all matters of scientific policy.

“ Ten Years' Testing of Model Seaplanes ”

1923 ◽  
Vol 27 (149) ◽  
pp. 224-243
Author(s):  
G. S. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Work ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
General Meeting ◽  
National Physical Laboratory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Experimental Tank ◽  
Know How ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Physical Laboratory ◽  
Hull Design

An Ordinary General Meeting- of the Society was held at the Royal Society of Arts, on Thursday, February ist, 1923, Professor L. Bairstow in the chair.The Chairman, in opening- the proceedings, said that Mr. G. S. Baker, O.B.E., of the National Physical Laboratory, would deal with flying boats and seaplanes. He would deal with the hull and its design, that part of the seaplane which differentiates it from the aeroplane. That subject had been touched on very lightly by Major Rennie at the previous meeting of the Society, in view of the present paper by Mr. Baker.Mr. Baker had begun work in 1912 on the problems of hull design, at a time when nothing of a definite nature was known; a few individual experiments had been carried out, but there was no systematised knowledge at all at that time. From that state of ignorance a great deal of experimental work had now rescued us. He did not know how far Mr. Baker would stress the point, but it was quite clear, from the investigation of certain accidents to seacraft, that there were fundamental differences in the behaviour of seaplane hulls on the water, differences which had a great deal of effect on the risk of flying-. For instance, if one type of hull was such that when the plane rose in the air it stalled, then all the aerodynamical consequences of stalling- followed, and there was difficulty. On the other hand, it appeared that we had a type of flying- boat which did not make the plane stall on getting into the air, and consequently if it came back to the water it was still controlled. For this type of development, which he believed really dated back to the C.E.i, we were mainly indebted to Mr. Baker and his associates at the National Physical Laboratory, and to the generosity of Sir Alfred Yarrow in placing such a magnificent piece of apparatus as the experimental tank at the disposal of the nation.Mr. Baker then read his paper on “ Ten Years’ Testing of Model Seaplanes.”

Centenary of the NPL

2001 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-160
Author(s):  
A. Cook
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
National Physical Laboratory ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Physical Laboratory ◽  
Royal Observatory ◽  
The Government ◽  
Government Grant

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) attained its centenary in 2000 and that was the occasion for a meeting in The Royal Society on 7 November 2000. The centenary is part of the record of The Royal Society because Fellows of the Society actively promoted the formation of the laboratory, and the programme of the Laboratory in its early years was guided by a committee of the Society. In addition, some of the researches of the Laboratory were supported by grants from the government grant administered by the Society. The relations between the early Laboratory and the Society are not unlike those between the Society and the early Royal Observatory more than 200 years earlier. The centenary of the NPL was indeed an event of the last year of the Second Millennium, and so we include this account of the meeting of 7 November, which includes Lord Sainsbury's and the President's Addresses and abstracts of the presentations from other speakers.

scholarly journals John Edward Lennard-Jones, 1894-1954

1955 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 174-184 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
National Physical Laboratory ◽  
Grammar School ◽  
Atoms And Molecules ◽  
Lennard Jones ◽  
Physical Laboratory ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Manchester

John Lennard-Jones was born on 27 October 1894 in Leigh, Lancashire and was educated at Leigh Grammar School, where he specialized in classics. In 1912 he entered Manchester University, changed his subject to mathematics in which he took an honours degree and then an M.Sc. under Professor Lamb, carrying out some research on the theory of sound. In 1915 he joined the Royal Flying Corps, obtained his Wings in 1917 and saw service in France; he also took part in some investigations on aerodynamics with Messrs Boulton and Paul and at the National Physical Laboratory. In 1919 he returned to the University of Manchester as lecturer in mathematics, took the degree of D.Sc. of that university and continued to work on vibrations in gases, becoming more and more interested in the gas-kinetic aspects of the subject as his paper of 1922 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society shows. In 1922, on the advice of Professor Sydney Chapman, he applied for and was elected to a Senior 1851 Exhibition to enable him to work in Cambridge, where he became a research student at Trinity College and was awarded the degree of Ph.D. in 1924. At Cambridge under the influence of R. H. Fowler he became more and more interested in the forces between atoms and molecules and in the possibility of deducing them from the behaviour of gases.

Clifford Paterson Lecture. Radar: new techniques and applications

1977 ◽  
Vol 354 (1677) ◽  
pp. 137-155 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
National Physical Laboratory ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Electrical Engineer ◽  
Great Effort ◽  
World War ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Measuring Devices ◽  
Physical Laboratory

I was greatly honoured to be invited by the Council of the Royal Society to give the first Clifford Paterson Lecture, for I respect greatly the engineering achievements of Sir Clifford Paterson and admire his work as an outstanding pioneer of industrial research. Paterson was trained as an electrical engineer and his first investigations were concerned with the techniques of a.c. measurement. His years of service with the National Physical Laboratory, however, coincided with the introduction and rapid extension of electrical illumination and he devoted great effort to the problems of photometry and the creation of international standards. But Paterson was an applied scientist of great versatility, and during World War I he applied himself with equal vigour to a number of military problems including the improvement of aircraft altitude measuring devices for use with anti-aircraft guns.

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