Chapter 6: The Birth of the Instrument Section (continued)

About this time, Alan Martin came up with the idea of generating hydrogen. Alan had joined the Bureau in 1937. He was a Science graduate from the University of Western Australia specialising in chemistry. He was a member of the same Meteorologist training course as John Lillywhite but instead of going out as a forecaster as most of the others did, he joined me.

The problem of obtaining supplies of hydrogen for upper air flights looked like getting worse as the war approached. Alan suggested we start to make hydrogen generators. E. W. Timcke knocked it back as unnecessary. That was par for the course, so we put it aside. Three months later Timcke approached us saying 'can you hurry up and develop that proposal for making hydrogen generators'.

Hydrogen supply had become a real problem. We again sought the help of the Air Force. George Ellis was a Flight Lieutenant at DTS, RAAF HQ. He was not part of the RAAF Meteorological Service. He was the oxygen king at DTS.

So we got hold of George, and asked how could we build hydrogen generators. Could we use oxygen cylinders? With George's help we had an oxygen cylinder fitted with a screw top and an autoclave stopper. Martin chased around and got some ferrosilicon and caustic soda and we put a pressure gauge on the cylinder. But we forgot to put a bursting disc on the first one. When the first prototype was tested at Albert Park the generator worked too well, became very hot and all the paint peeled off. Alan Martin and his helper ran like hell fearing an explosion. We put a bursting disc on the next one.

Bureau of Meteorology