Abstract
BY the Finance Act of 1925, a customs duty of per cent was placed upon films imported into Great Britain. During the debate on the Finance Act of 1928, Capt. Jan Fraser, M.P., moved an amendment exempting from duty “cinematograph films … certified by the Royal Society of London for promoting Natural Knowledge to be solely an illustration of scientific investigation for exhibition before members of a recognised scientific body and imported only for the purpose of such exhibition free of charge”. This amendment was accepted, and proved to be a small but much appreciated boon to scientific workers and others, who obviously benefit by the free international exchange of films recording their investigations. The new Import Duties Bill did not include such films in its list of imports exempt from duty, and Capt. Fraser put down an amendment the object of which was to retain the privilege. This amendment has now been taken over by the Chancellor of the Exchequer as an official amendment, and was incorporated in the Bill on report stage on Feb. 25. In a letter in the Times of Feb. 27, Sir Henry Wellcome refers to the position of material for exhibition in museums. A clause has been added to the Import Duties Bill exempting such material when it is more than a hundred years old, but this will not cover natural history, ethnographical, and other specimens required by research workers. The Museums Association, in a letter from its honorary secretary, Mr. D. W. Herdman, has endorsed Sir Henry Wellcome's statement, adding that its views have already been communicated to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Museum material is clearly on the same footing as printed books, and we hope that it will be possible similarly to exempt it from import duty.
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Imported Scientific Films and Museum Specimens. Nature 129, 339 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129339a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129339a0