Dr Brian Austin

A problem peculiar to mining is how to transmit radio signals through rock. Anyone who has ever ventured into the lowest levels of an underground multi-storey carpark knows that your favourite radio station you were listening to just a few minutes before has suddenly disappeared. Those radio signals were not just blocked by the reinforced concrete of the building but they were absorbed by it too. This, then, is the problem confronting anyone underground in a mine who might want to communicate by radio. The range is pitiful. In fact, communications are often possible by shouting when nothing is heard on the fancy (and expensive) walkie-talkie you took down with you to talk to a colleague, using a similar radio, just a few metres away.

Whereas miners have managed without radio ever since the first brave individual ventured into the bowels of the earth, there are situations when being able to communicate directly through the rock could well prove to be a life-saver. One good example is when there’s been a rock-fall or a fire deep underground and a rescue team is despatched to take immediate action. Those rescue brigades, as they’re known, were originally called Proto teams because of the Proto breathing apparatus they all wore on their chests. In 1938, Dr A.J. Orenstein, medical adviser to Rand Mines realised how vitally important good communications were between the Proto team members and he asked Professor Basil Schonland, Director of the Bernard Price Institute (BPI) of Geophysical Research at Wits...

Recently I came across what may well be classed as the first example of what we now call "electronic warfare". It was described by no less a writer than Winston Churchill and it appears in his book "London to Ladysmith via Pretoria" (1900).

This intriguing incident occurred during the attempt by the British Army to relieve Ladysmith, then under siege by the Boers. I shall leave it to Churchill to describe what happened:

That night we tried to congratulate or encourage Ladysmith, and the searchlight perseveringly flashed the Morse code on the clouds. But before it had been working half an hour, the Boer searchlight saw it and hurried to interfere, flickering, blinking, and crossing to try to confuse the dots and dashes, and appeared to us who watched this curious aerial battle - Briton and Boer fighting each other in the sky with vibrations of ether - to confuse them more effectually. Next morning, however, the sun came out for uncertain periods, and Ladysmith was able to tell her own story briefly and jerkily, but still a vey satisfactory account.

It occurred to me that the searchlight used by the Army signaller in tapping out the Morse code, was most likely mounted on an armoured train and somewhere in my collection of Boer War artefacts was a photograph of just such a train. Not only was there a "shutter telegraph" mounted upon a searchlight on an armoured train but the train carried two significant sign boards attached to its...

I'm very good at integral and differential calculus;

I know the scientific names of beings animalculous:

In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

Gilbert and Sullivan’s famous patter song from “The Pirates of Penzance” needs no introduction even though the above extract is actually its second verse. In the context of the tale I’m about to tell it captures the essence of the man concerned rather nicely. He was Sir Basil Schonland CBE OMG FRS, scientist, soldier and a remarkable servant of two prime ministers plus a redoubtable field marshal.

Sir Basil Schonland

In March 1944, Brigadier Schonland was appointed Scientific Adviser (SA) to Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery’s 21 Army Group, just two months before the invasion of Europe - known as Operation Overlord. It was rather late in the day considering the task that lay ahead of him. Schonland had come to this position after serving, since 1941, in Britain’s Air Defence Research Establishment (ADRDE) and then as the superintendent of the Army Operational Research (AORG). Prior to that, as a Lieutenant Colonel, he was CO of the Special Signals Services (SSS) of the SA Corps of Signals, where he had led South Africa’s remarkable effort to develop a radar system ultimately intended for the defence of the country’s 3000...

A little-known story in South Africa is the remarkable effort under the direction of Professor (later Sir) Basil Schonland, Director of the Bernard Price Institute of Geophysical Research (the BPI), at Wits, to design and build a radar set within three months of the outbreak of war in September 1939.

Britain took the decision earlier in the year to inform its Dominions of the secret device (then called RDF) for detecting enemy aircraft and ships by means of radio waves. A senior scientist from each of those countries was invited to England to be briefed on the technology. South Africa chose to send a military man then serving in London. Needless to say, he was non-plussed.

However, the New Zealand scientist, Ernest Marsden, called into Cape Town on his way home where he was met by Schonland. During their three-day journey by sea to Durban, Marsden briefed Schonland on all he had learnt at Bawdsey Manor near Ipswich.

On his return to Johannesburg Schonland assembled his design team: engineers from Wits (Guerino ‘Boz’ Bozzoli), UCT (Noel Roberts) and Natal (Eric Phillips). They were joined by the BPI’s physicist Dr Philip Gane. Their task was to design and build a radar set in order, as Schonland put it, “to learn the technique”.

Within just three months they had succeeded in producing a working system, consisting of a separate transmitter and receiver, each with its own rotatable antenna. The first trials were disappointing. No radar “echoes” were received from a test target...