Abstract
IN his opening address, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald said that a little more than a generation ago, oil was displacing coal as a source of power, and chemists began to wonder whether it was not possible to ‘resurrect’ coal. The German chemists were the pioneers and among them stands conspicuously the name of Dr. Bergius. In 1921 he explained his ideas to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and in 1923, under his influence, experiments were begun by the Fuel Research Station. “At that time, fortunately for the chemical industry, Sir Alfred Mond was living. . . . This country does not yet know what debt it owes to Sir Alfred Mond's vision. The result then was that the Government gave a subsidy to enable the necessary research to be prosecuted.” In 1927 the experiments were taken over by the Imperial Chemical Industries; that secured that they would be conducted on the scale, and with the expenditure, necessary for their success. As a result of these experiments, the Government again came in. On July 17, 1933, Mr. MacDonald announced in the House of Commons that the Government would guarantee a preference to all British-produced motor spirit; and in March 1934 Parliament passed the Hydrocarbon Production Act. “Few announcements have had such far-reaching results. The immediate effect was that Sir Harry McGowan, that man of vision and energy, announced that Imperial Chemical Industries would at once proceed to erect a plant, and we are here within a year and a half to open it.”
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Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's Tribute. Nature 136, 635 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136635b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136635b0