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Dr J. G. McKendrick now Professor of Physiology at Glasgow University and also a member of the family circle through his marriage with Mrs Dewar’s sister. Dr McKendrick had been engaged in studying the action of cold on microphytes and had found that at the temperature of liquid air though in some cases putrescence was delayed in none was it completely destroyed. Liquid hydrogen provided now the lowest temperature available. In co-operation with James Dewar he froze for an hour, at a temperature of –120 degrees Celsius samples of meat, milk, etc., in sealed tubes. When these were opened after being kept at blood heat for a few days their contents were found to be putrid, thus showing that no matter how low the temperature living organisms are indestructible. Heat can do what cold cannot achieve.
What can be termed an extra mural activity of Professor Dewar was that of being an expert witness in court cases. Such was the calibre of his witness that litigants, especially large companies, were prepared to pay large sums to secure his services which provided him with a very considerable bonus to his somewhat meagre salary. Both he and his friend Sir William Crookes, an equally coveted expert witness, defended their demand for high fees on the ground that, as Sir William expressed it to a firm of law agents, “We who may be looked upon as leaders in the profession owe it to our fellows to charge high and so do our best to counteract the lowering of prices which is so prevalent to the lower branches.” (note 32) Never did he enter a witness box, as Horace says, stans pede in uno. He always did his homework thoroughly. Meticulously prepared and with a thorough mastery of his subject James Dewar was a priceless asset to any litigant and with his alert and brilliant mind he was a formidable witness when it came to cross examination by opposing learned counsel. He was engaged in a very large number of cases, one of the most difficult being the Edison Electric case, in which the Edison Swan Company sought to restrain several others from infringement of their patents in which the evidence was a highly technical and scientific nature and which went on for more than a fortnight. One of the most amusing was the whisky appeal by James Davidge and Thomas Samuel Wells against their conviction for unlawfully selling Scotch and Irish whisky “not of the nature, substance and quality demanded”. James Dewar’s evidence based both on scientific analysis and on his personal experience of having “tasted all varieties of whisky from the days of my youth” and his ripostes to the Q.C.s who were questioning him makes highly entertaining reading, and reveals a witness who is at least a match for his questioners. From these two cases alone one can well see why a litigant was eager to have James Dewar espouse his case.
As science is international it is of vital importance that the terms used by scientists in every country should have exactly the same meaning. How else can scientists speak to each other across the dividing walls of nationality and language? How else can they co-operate in research and ensure that their discoveries are made available in the commercial world and on the factory floor. A standard nomenclature when terms are fixed in meaning, where they are permanent, universal and acceptable to all is essential. In the latter half of the nineteenth century when electricity and telegraphy were leaping across all national barriers, when electrical measurements were of daily occurrence not only in scientific laboratories but in factories and workshops in which the manufacturer of electrical and telegraphic apparatus was carried out, it became a matter of grave and urgent importance that a standard vocabulary of measurement should be established. Thus ohms, volts, amperes, coulombs – to name but a few terms – had to mean the same everywhere. It was also important that there should be agreed a standard of light with reference to which various electrical and other lights could be measured. With this in view the first International Electrical Exhibition was held in Paris in the autumn of 1881 (note 33). It was sponsored by the French government who invited to it the leading scientific and electrical specialists of all countries whose business it was to meet in conference with a view to discussing many important questions connected with electricity and telegraphy and in particular to establish an international system of units for expressing the results of electrical measurements and of their research. Among the British representatives at this the first of several such conferences was Professor James Dewar. In 1908 there was another ‘first’ in Paris, this time the first International Congress of the Cold Storage Industries held in the Grand Palais. One of the sections concerned itself with questions relating to low temperatures and their general effects, at which the principal speaker was Sir James Dewar. NEXT PAGE
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