First conference

 

 

It is a somewhat mixed blessing that in my career I have attended a lot of conferences and scientific meetings. These ranged from one day meetings of Chemical Society interest groups through to big international meetings. The latter are often over several days and in my case seemed to be in the USA. I even got to present a paper at one such in Washington. Meetings  over several days also happen in the UK and my very first was of this type. I was a very junior staff member at Unilever Research and my boss at the time clearly felt he should send me to one as a consolation for not being chosen to attend a big meeting in Holland.

I was in the Information Section at the time and one of my allocated areas was chemical analysis. I’m sure he thought it very appropriate that it should be the Technicon Autoanalyser  meeting in Brighton in 1966. The Autoanalyser was produced by Technicon Corp. in the US and it used segmented flow analysis. This means that separate amounts of liquid reagent were moved along tubes with each quantity of liquid separated from the next by air bubbles. A simple application therefore was to pass the reagent into the sample and measure a colour change using a colourimeter. The intensity of the colour gives a measure of the concentration of the ingredient in the sample. Far more sophisticated techniques are possible using the same idea of moving discrete quantities of reagents

Autoanalysers automate repetitive steps which otherwise would be done individually by a technician. One common application is the routine analysis of clinical samples. This lowers the cost and speeds the result. At the time in 1966 Unilever used Autoanalysers for such things as phosphate analysis in detergents. To do this and mainly to develop new uses two chemists Ron and Tom were employed.  Such development requires a lot of skill and knowledge and these two were the company experts. In contrast I was almost abysmally ignorant. I had only just become acquainted with the routine analysis by them and that at a very superficial level. As for their development goals I had no knowledge.

As individuals I got on with them quite well. Tom was older ( fifty plus ) and affected a certain worldly cynical outlook. Ron was younger ( maybe thirties) much more enthusiastic although keener to talk about cars that chemical analysis. Rather later Ron helped with a big DIY car repair which became a group effort when I had moved to the main laboratory.

We arranged to meet and travel together by train from Liverpool Lime Street station. It was there I committed a major blunder. I hadn’t travelled for Unilever before and in accordance with their instructions I bought a first class ticket, boarded and looked out for Ron and Tom. I didn’t see them and decided I had better continue on that train. After a while I searched the train and found them sitting happily in second class. They laughed at me and asked if I hadn’t realised that the thing to do was buy second class but claim for first. I spent the rest of the trip with them thinking I was naïve and had wasted money.

Brighton is an important conference venue and to welcome us in style there was an evening reception at the Brighton Pavilion. This stunning building was commissioned by the Prince of Wales in 1787 and is in a pastiche in Indian style. It is very ornate and sumptuously furnished. I remember nothing much of the reception but the tour of the Pavilion was stunning. I recall being hugely impressed by the large kitchen with monster copper cooking vessels plus a spit well capable of ox roasting. The Prince was a notorious glutton.

The conference was staged at the Metropole Hotel which was too posh for me to be staying there. I was in a nondescript hotel fairly close by. The conference took the form of several meeting rooms where presentations were made simultaneously so it was a matter of choosing a session to attend. Also there was a large exhibition of Autoanalysers mainly actually doing a wide range of analyses. To me this latter was by far the most interesting. There was something rather charming about watching slugs of reagents powered along transparent tubes, propelled by peristatic pumps and watching as a stream of results appeared without any intervention. This was deceiving in that setting up the techniques must have taken much effort.

In contrast the conference sessions were quite boring. I had no particular interest the analyses discussed and by the second day I decided to play hooky and explore the city. I found the famous Lanes which are narrow streets bordered by quirky shops quite interesting although everything was far too expensive for me. I had been working for only a year or so and Annette was a student teacher.

Looking at the internet now I see the Autoanalyser has developed enormously with computerised operation and all kinds of fancy detection techniques. Analysis is an area which has developed amazingly in the past sixty years and detection for example of parts per billion of impurities in water is quite routine. In general the demand is so large that it is worthwhile to develop dedicated equipment say for clinical samples with the Autoanalyser for more general applications.

As for me I was glad to move to a quite different area. I have never used the ( limited ) knowledge I gained at this conference.