British Scientific Instrument Research Association: New Laboratories

Abstract

The formal opening of the new laboratories of the British Scientific Instrument Research Association will take place on Thursday, July 10 (not July 9 as previously announced). The Minister of Supply will be the principal guest. The address of the laboratories is “Sira”, Southill, Elmstead Woods, Chislehurst, Kent (Imperial 2237). Recent issues of the monthly Bulletin of the Association have reported on the progress made in transferring the Association's laboratories from Russell Square, London, to “Sira”. The Chemical Department occupies the first floor of the new buildings, with a large main laboratory, two research laboratories, a balance room, a preparation room and ample storage space. There is also a furnace room, equipped with glass-making crucibles, away from the main building. The transfer of the Physics Department was begun last December, and it will occupy two large laboratories, a dark room and an office, all situated on the ground floor. One laboratory is equipped as a high-vacuum laboratory, with three different types of evaporation plants (Hickman, Edwards and Metro-Vickers). This section has been largely concerned in the past with the problems of production of aluminium, rhodium and anti-reflexion evaporated films. Efforts are now being directed to the production of three types of interference films: uncoloured reflexion films for beam-splitting, coloured reflexion and transmission films for coloured filtering, and strongly selective transmission filters for narrow-wave-band filters (see Nature, 158, 422 ; 1946). The second laboratory is being equipped as a General Physics Laboratory, where problems of instrument design and manufacture, such as the measurement and control of humidity, high-temperature thermocouple measurements, and the measurement of high resistance, are to be studied.