| Résumé : |
Henri Richardson Procter, FRS, came from a tanning family and was self-educated in the best traditions of the Victorian age, so much so that colleagues at the Yorkshire College, forerunner of the University of Leeds, considered that he could have held a chair in any of half-a-adozen departments : the Royal Society elected him a Fellow and the leather-sellers' Company made him a Honorary Liveryman.
Having had the privilege of studying in the Leather Department at Leeds University with teachers such as McCandlish and Atkin, who had themselves worked with Procter, it is a great honour to be giving this, the twenty-first Procter Memorial Lecture and repay some of the debt which I owe to them and to the Society, particularly as the tradition of Procter Memorial Lectures is to invite an eminent scientist from outside the industry.
The leather industry was fortunate in having such a person to establish formal higher education in leather studies in the UK, for not only did he make a successful transition from industry to academic life, but he was also instrumental in establishing the International Association of Leather Trades' Chemists. This progenitor of the IULTCS was formed during an inaugural meeting held in London (28-30 september 1897) with corresponding secretaries in Austria, France, Germany, Scandinavian countries and the USA. Procter and Dr J. Gordon Parket of Herold's Institute (subsquently the National Leather-sellers' College) were the joint secretaries.
It is interesting that the inaugural meeting, at which discussion cenred around the need for consistent analytical methods for vegetable tanning materials, included representatives from leather research stations in Berlin, Copenhagen, Freiberg (Saxony, DDR) and Vienna : three of which are still functioning today, the Copenhagen centre celebrating its centenary this year. It took British tanners another 35 years before they established a research centre.
The theme I wish to pursue in this Memorial Lecture is a retrospective review of Procter's Text-Book of Tanning, published 100 years ago in 1885, with a look to the future. Procter's book did not confine itself to the science and technologies of leather manufacture, but incluede chapters on engineering matters as well as commerce, economics and statistics. This latter point will serve as useful base for this discourse. |
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Accueil
Twenty-first Procter memorial lecture Procter's text-book of tanning - 1885 : a retrospective review in the centennial year in JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF LEATHER TECHNOLOGISTS & CHEMISTS (JSLTC), Vol. 70 (Année 1986)
