Inventions by Grahamstonians

In my latest book, due out in October 2017 and titled What a Great Idea! Awesome South African Inventions, I mention a number of Grahamstonian inventors and innovators (defined as people who were born, lived or worked in the City of Saints). Two are mentioned here and others will be mentioned in a later article.

In the chapter on ‘ Transport’, James Greathead, a forgotten hero, cracks a mention. Greathead was born in Grahamstown in 1844, the grandson of an 1820 Settler, and educated at St Andrew’s College. He emigrated to England in 1859 where he became involved in the development of the new traction and electric railway network. His most famous inventions were the ‘Greathead Shield for Underground Tunnelling’ (1869) and the ‘ Greathead Grouting Machine’ (1891).

Greathead, at the tender age of 24 years, won the contract for the construction of shafts and tunnels for the Tower Subway using his new tunnelling shield. When it opened in 1870, it was the first underground tube railway in the world.

Later he was the resident engineer on the City & South London Railway, the world’s first underground electric railway (1890) and also the joint engineer on the Liverpool Overhead Railway, the first overhead electric railway. He worked with many famous British engineers, including Sir Benjamin Baker, who admired his innovative work and called him ‘ the practical author of the great London Tube Railway’. Greathead died of cancer in London in 1896 and is commemorated by a bronze statue, unveiled by the Lord Mayor in 1994, in the City of London.

Another giant of South African innovation, Basil Schonland, is mentioned in several chapters. He was a star scholar at St Andrew’s College, Gra- hamstown, where he was described as a “rocket-propelled, guided, educational missile”. All subjects were of interest to him but his favourites were science and maths. To the amazement of his fellow learners, he read physics for fun and conducted devilishly difficult private experiments that had everyone else baffled.

In 1911, at the age of 14, he passed matric in South Africa with distinction in every subject. The following year, he passed the intermediate examination, once again first in South Africa. At Rhodes University College he achieved first class honours in Maths in 1915 and then, still only 18 years of age, went to Caius College, Cambridge.

As the First World War was in full swing, he was almost immediately recruited into the army, serving in the signals section of the Royal Engineers, and was soon at the front in France repairing broken field telephones.

By the end of the War he had been awarded an OBE and achieved the rank of Major, all by the age of 21! The temple of experimental physics in Britain at the time was the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, and here its high priest was the taciturn New Zealander, Ernest Rutherford, who had won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908.

Within a year of Schonland joining Rutherford’s team, the Kiwi, after years of patient research, brought about the first manmade nuclear reaction. Although Schonland was the most junior member of the team, he was part of one of the most momentous events in science.

He then had a difficult choice to make – should he accept a lucrative offer from the Marconi company, stay at Cavendish, or return to South Africa? Luckily for us, he accepted a post in the Physics Department at UCT, where he spent 14 productive years. His nickname was ‘Lightning’ Schonland, not only in tribute to one of his main research field but also because of his dynamic lecturing style.

In 1938 Schonland was appointed Director of the Bernard Price Institute of Geophysical Research at Wits, where he continued his research on lightning and initiated important work on earthquakes. World War II disrupted his research again and he was soon appointed, as a Brigadier, to lead a team to develop longrange radar.

Within a few months they built experimental radar sets using locally available parts that culminated in the remarkably successful ‘JB Radar Transmitter’, which was extensively used in East and North Africa and outperformed the cumbersome British field radars. By 1944 Schonland was right-hand man in all matters scientific and technical to Field-Marshall Lord Montgomery and after the War he returned to South Africa and did a magnificent job establishing the CSIR as its first President.

From 1951 to 1962 he served as the first Chancellor of Rhodes University, and, in 1960, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to science. What a CV for an Eastern Cape boytjie! • Mike Bruton is a retired scientist and a busy writer; mikefishesbruton@gmail.com