Abstract
REPORT FOR 1945 THE report of the Director of Research of the Wool Industries Research Association for 1945, in additional to accounts of progress in the research programme during the past year, includes a review of war work, to which reference has previously been made only in general terms (The Association, Leeds 6). The most considerable of this was in devising and manufacturing special types of protective clothing. Two methods of impregnating cloth with carbon and fixing the carbon were developed into large-scale processes. In the first, a two-stage process, the carbon-impregnated cloth was sprayed with ‘Positex’, a rubber latex to which a positive charge had been given by substances of the cationic detergent type. In the second, a one-bath process, the carbon rubber latex mixture was stabilized by methylcellulose. Carbon-impregnated cloth was used extensively to trap the odour from stinking wounds, and the use of carbon (medical filter) cloth in hospitals for various purposes is likely to continue. As a member of the Ministry of Supply Textile Rotproofing Panel, the Association helps to develop and apply large-scale methods of tropical proofing. Socks, jerseys and blankets were rot-proofed by impregnation with 1 per cent of chromium (as potassium dichromate), and as the soluble chromium was restricted to 0.01 per cent the dyeing technique had to be modified. All-wool and wool-mixture felts used as internal components and packing for ammunition and wireless gear have been proofed with cuprammonium sulphate against attack by moths and bacteria, and a khaki fleece cloth was designed and manufactured at Torridon in response to a request for a special fabric for anti-aircraft personnel. The Association has also made an exhaustive test of proprietary substitutes for olive oil in large-scale combing of wool, and five of these, together with a ‘Control Combing Oil’ devised by the Association, based on ground-nut oil, by early 1940, have been used throughout the War.
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Wool Industries Research Association. Nature 158, 386–387 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/158386a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/158386a0