Sir "Joseph Petavel 183 



of our readers that Science is a ' dry as dust ' occupation 

 concerned with problems remote from life. 



There is certainly nothing academic about the work 

 of the National Physical Laboratory. Indeed, there is 

 hardly anything in our industrial life which the organiza- 

 tion directed by Sir Joseph Petavel does not touch. In 

 setting out to record the many marvels to be seen at the 

 Laboratory, the only difficulty is to know where to begin. 



Let us start with the story of the Froude Experimental 

 Tank. This resembles a super-swimming bath, five hun- 

 dred and fifty feet long, thirty feet wide, and twelve feet 

 deep. It was presented to the nation by Sir Alfred 

 Yarrow, the famous shipbuilder, for the general advance- 

 ment of naval architecture. 



This tank is one of a series of ' testing basins/ of which 

 the earliest was built by William Froude, at his own 

 expense, at Torquay. 



Froude was the first man to prove the value of experi- 

 ments made with model ships dragged through the water 

 in a tank, and the tank at Teddington was named after 

 him in honour of his pioneer work. 



The existence of the Froude Experimental Tank has 

 enabled grave scientists to elevate adventuring with 

 model ships from a sport for the young to an exact science. 

 With wax models that are exact replicas of the vessels 

 under investigation they carry out scientific tests to solve 

 riddles which could be solved in no other way. 



Many years ago these tanks proved their value. For 

 instance, models of Sir Thomas Lipton's first famous 

 Shamrocks were made and tested in the private tank at 

 Messrs Denny Brothers' shipyard at Leven, years before 

 the War. Indeed, in the erection of Shamrock II no 

 fewer than sixty models were made, the experiments 

 lasting over a period of nine months. Over and over 

 again the great tank at Teddington has proved its value 

 to the nation. 



