There a chemist who had recently worked for a company involved in the manufacture of submarine telephone cables recognised its similarity to gutta percha ” the material used to sheathe such cables. Tests showed that polythene was superior to the natural material.
Within a short time, his former employers ordered 100 tons of the new material and thus making it worthwhile for ICI to build a production plant.
The world’s first polythene plant came on stream the day that Hitler invaded Poland.
Subsequently, polythene played an important part in radar during the Second World War.
Afterwards, when ethylene became available on a large scale from oil refining processes ” previously it had been made from alcohol ” the price of the polymer dropped.
It then entered the domestic market to begin the explosive growth towards today’s production level of millions of tonnes a year. Australia’s new technological guru
Jane Ford cables an interview with a new science and technology minister
LATERAL THINKER and rapid-fire ideas man, ex quiz king and schoolteacher and lawyer ” Australia’s new Science and Technology Minister, Barry Jones, is something of a phenomenon in Australian politics.
Unlike most politicians he is passionately interested in technology and its social implications. Jones’s recent book “Sleepers Wake !
Technology and the Future of Work “crystallises many of his most radical ideas and has become compulsory reading, particularly in the corridors of his new department. The book has already sold out a sixth edition.
In it Jones challenges the concept of full employment and questions the relevance of the work ethic and advocates the redefinition of work to include domestic labour and hobby activities.
He emphasises the need for recurrent education and presses for guaranteed incomes for all and a national superannuation fund.
The new minister admits that all this could take eight to ten years and an improved economic climate but he is adamant that attitudes must change.
Australia, he adds, has entered a post-industrial period and without radical alternatives and a revolution of the traditional industrial base its society will crumble.
Almost single handedly in the past three years Jones has made high technology and the “sunrise” industries household words and created a climate of industrial and community awareness.
He describes Australia’s traditional industrial base as geriatric and virtually past salvation.
The country’s only hope for economic recovery, he claims, is for it to turn to the highly skilled, “sunrise industries” that will generate wealth and cope with an expanding welfare bill.
Support for 16 of these sunrise areas, including biotechnology, custom made chips, computer software and scientific instrumentation and solar technology, is the cornerstone of his science and technology policy.
He plans to introduce new grants, government loans and schemes to stimulate the new technical industries.
Whether this will be sufficient to catalyse the country’s moribund industry and boost its declining research effort is debatable.
But Jones is the perpetual optimist ” even in the face of a declining economy and a budget deficiency of $A96 billion.
“The size of the deficit simply indicates the need to change the whole economic base of the country,” he says.
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