Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 5 July 2012

Technical Memories (Part 23)

Calls to Arms

By the time the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute perhaps settled down in its educational programmes, its goals shifted again not just for the Cork institute but for other institutes across Ireland. The advent of World War I or the Great War again changed the focus of the country’s needs.

During World War I (1914–1918), Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which entered the war in August 1914 as one of the Entente Powers, along with France and Russia, when it declared war to halt the military expansion of the Central Powers. The central powers consisted of the German Empire, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria. At the outbreak of the war, most Irish people, regardless of political affiliation, supported the war in much the same way as their British counterparts and both nationalist and unionist leaders initially backed the British war effort. Over 200,000 Irishmen fought in the war, in several sites and just under 30,000 died.

Arising from the blockade of imports and exports to and from Ireland George Fletcher, the assistant secretary of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, reflected in a paper delivered to the Insurance Institute of Ireland in April 1915 on new opportunities for the country’s existing resources. He was one of the first gentlemen to be recruited by Sir Horace Plunkett, the first vice president in the Department, following its establishment in 1899. In Fletcher’s paper (published afterwards), he reflected on the Department’s work to that point in time and also outlined the uses of technical instruction in the crisis that lay before it.

Commenting of the introduction of machinery and steam power, the change in the nature of apprenticeships through the new conditions of manufacture, and by the application of science to industry Fletcher deemed technical schools as essential to industrial progress. Yet he noted that the vast majority of Ireland’s youths never received any school education after the age of thirteen or fourteen; they never entered either an evening continuation school or a technical school. Hence to Fletcher, “they receive little direct education for their business in life; such a state of things constitutes a grave national danger and calls for immediate remedy”. Technical education should be provided to the army of workers in the country but also the economic leaders, what he described as “captains of industry”. He argued that technical institutes should be more generally availed of and in connection with this some lessons should be taken from the educational organisation of Germany. A great leap in industrial progress could also be affected if employers fully realised the advantages to be derived from providing technical education to their apprentices.

Scientific research was an important aspect to George Fletcher who noted that there should be “a more intelligent appreciation of the importance of and a greater readiness to apply the teachings of science to industrial uses”. He further related that to protect the interests of trades as a whole and to promote their development, the cultivation of a community of interests amongst manufacturers should be encouraged. Those ideas could be greatly assisted by the formation of manufacturers’ associations. 

George Fletcher also spoke of the feasibility of small but well-organised industries in Ireland, and called for a great extension of their kind in Ireland’s smaller towns. Backing up his statements, he critiqued the state of imports and exports in Ireland and the opportunities available arising from Germany going to war. In 1912, the imports into the United Kingdom of manufactures from Germany amounted to some 40 million pounds. The corresponding exports from the United Kingdom to Germany were about 30 million pounds- a difference of 19 million pounds. The export of German manufacturers to the Overseas Dominions and Foreign Countries outside Europe amounted to over 80 million pounds. Fletcher on Germany’s industries and international connection noted of the country’s choice to disconnect from the market: “it is certain that Germany has suffered in enormously great degrees owing to the removal from the seas of Germany’s shipping and the cutting-off of supplies by neutrals. Some 40 per cent of Germany’s total port trade was to countries now at war with her and other sources of supply are now being developed. She is suffering acutely by the stoppage of supplies of raw materials. Germany’s woollen trade depends largely, therefore, on imported wool, two thirds of which came from countries now hostile-most of it from Australia and the Cape.”

Under the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction strong and successful efforts had been made, to encourage home and cottage industries. The production of Irish woollen goods had nearly doubled since 1904. Another example, the lace industry, yielded a valuable supplement to the family income in many an Irish rural home. The number of persons employed in this industry increased from 2,099 in 1901 to 3,004 in 1911. To Fletcher, effort needed be made to conserve and develop such industries “that the tendency is for work to pass, sooner or later, into the factory”.

To be continued…

For an up to date index of Our City, Our Town articles, see www.corkheritage.ie

Caption:

648a. World War I propaganda poster (source: ebay)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 21 June 2012

Technical Memories (Part 21)

Wandering and Wondering

In 1908 Alfred Leonard was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Research Scholarship (continued from last week). The 1851 Research Fellowship was and still is a UK scheme conducted by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 to annually award a three-year research scholarship to approximately eight “young scientists or engineers of exceptional promise”. Today candidates are required to be citizens of Britain, the Republic of Ireland, Pakistan or a Commonwealth of Nations country. The Commission has been awarding fellowships and scholarships since 1891. The Commission’s Archive contains material relating to various schemes as well as to the students who have held these prestigious awards. Previous award holders include 12 Nobel Laureates.

From his scholarship Alfred Leonard spent two years at the University of Bonn where he obtained the degree of Ph.D. He notes in his memoirs:

“The chemical institute was a detached building with several laboratories and two lecture theatres…in the main research laboratory there were fifteen Germans, three British, two Russians, and one French student…the majority were very keen on their work and it was interesting to discuss our problems amongst ourselves. These consisted largely in the preparation of new compounds and combustions thereof to verify their composition. My line of country was connected with tartrazin and related compounds”.

Alfred carried out work with Professor Richard Anschütz who had succeeded Professor Friedrich August Kekulé as Director of the Department of Chemistry. Kehulé was a German organic chemist. From the 1850s until his death, he was one of the most prominent chemists in Europe, especially in theoretical chemistry. He was the principal founder of the theory of chemical structure. Of the first five Nobel Prizes in Chemistry Kekulé’s most famous work was on the structure of benzene. Richard Anschütz was interested in stereochemistry and studied the isomerism of unsaturated acids with Kekulé. Anschütz made a point of teaching chemistry to British POWs in the First World War because of his admiration for another chemist, Archibald Scott Couper’s work on chemical structures. In later life Anschütz became interested in the history of chemistry. His name is associated with the Anschütz synthesis of anthracenes from substituted benzoyl chlorides. He had a big influence on the future work of the Cork born scholar Alfred Leonard.

On Bonn, Alfred noted:

“Bonn is situated on the Rhine about twenty miles above Cologne at a point where the river is some 500 yards wide and becoming really picturesque. It was popular to make excursions by pleasure steamers to Godesberg, Remagen, Konigwinter and many other beauty spots, but the most beautiful of all these was the valley of the Ahr which we used to explore on foot.”

In student life Alfred tells of the tennis that was catered for in the summer on an enormous flat piece of land laid out in hard gravel courts. In winter, when frost arrived this land was flooded artificially and this created an extensive area for skating. A full brass band provided suitable music and restaurant catered for the comfort of the skaters, while coloured lights at night gave the appearance of a “fairyland”. According to Alfred, “the orchestras at dances were superb and played music, very different from what passes for dance music today [1950]. The spirit of carnival reigned supreme on the three days preceding Ash Wednesday; business houses closed and the whole population joined in the general festivities including elaborately bedecked processions, fancy-dress dances and increased consumption of beer and wine.”

In 1910 Alfred returned to Ireland and became an assistant to Professor Senior in the Department of Chemistry, University College, Galway. A year later he was appointed Head of the Department of Chemistry in the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute, Cork, where he remained until 1916 when he rejoined the Royal College of Science, Dublin, as Lecturer in Physical and Metallurgical Chemistry. By the Act of 1926, he became a member of staff of the University College. As a teacher, Dr. Leonard was eminently successful, and generations of students came to appreciate his meticulous presentation of lectures and the thorough grounding he gave in laboratory skills. His training in the College of Science followed by his experience in Bonn had instilled in him a strict sense of discipline, and students in his charge rapidly learned that an untidy bench or sloppy notebook called for comment that was not readily forgotten. The high standards he maintained made an impact, and it was quite common for students to return as graduates in later years to pay tribute and to thank him for the training they had received.

Alfred Leonard played an active part in organising the profession of Chemistry in Ireland. He was associated with the Irish Chemical Association (Cumann Ceimicidhe na h-Eireann), founded by Professor Hugh Ryan in 1923, and when the ‘old Cumann’ became the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland in 1950, he was elected President of the new body. He retired from his statutory post in 1957, but continued to help, until prevented by illness, with the teaching in the Department of Chemistry. He died on 28 August 1966.

To be continued…