THE SCIENCE EXHIBITION The Eighth Science Exhibition was held on Friday and Saturday, 1st and 2nd April. This was the third exhibition since the war, which inevitably interrupted the triennial sequence begun in 1924 and continued until 1939. The first post-war exhibition was held in 1947 and a second in 1951. More ambitious and wider in its scope than any of its predecessors, the Exhibition occupied the whole of the new Science block and all the class-rooms of the main building, as well as pressing into service the C.C.F. Hut, the Seamanship Room, the Careers Room, and the School House Quiet Room. This very considerable expansion from the humble beginnings in 1924, when the handful of rooms which then comprised our Laboratory accommodation sufficed to house the exhibition, is a just commentary on the ever-increasing importance of Science, not merely in the specialist field of education but in the whole fabric of the society in which we live today. Even a casual inspection of the wide range of experiments, exhibits, and demonstrations (the programme enumerated 162) which the Exhibition provided must have brought home to the most unenthusiastic layman the magnitude of the revolution which has occurred in .the last 100 years—a revolution which has gathered momentum in our own time and which must inevitably continue with ever-increasing rapidity. All technological progress derives, of course, from the pure science of the laboratories and the tentative inquiries of research-workers. The theme of .the Exhibition was to illustrate this by underlining the connection between the pure science taught in the School, in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Geographical studies, and its application in Industry and Commerce, in the Home, in Advertising, and in Agriculture. This design ipso facto if the expression, in this connection, is not deviationist and reactionary—inevitably required the display of exhibits illustrating the commercial and industrial application of Science which the School, naturally, could not provide of its own resources, and which were generously loaned to us by various firms and individuals. They were, indeed, an important aspect of the Exhibition, and it was, we believe, a wrong-headed view which criticised their presence on the grounds that they smacked somewhat of the professionalism of a British Industries Fair. Given the theme which the organisers set themselves to illustrate •(and it was, we think, an admirable choice), they were vital to its full and adequate exposition. Furthermore, there was justification enough in the admirable and competent way in which the boys themselves demonstrated and explained these often highly technical commercial and industrial appliances. The lesson which the Exhibition taught, and taught admirably, was that the long road which may lead ultimately to the discovery of Penicillin, the wonders of the electronic brain, or —
14
