| THE HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING |    |
| PART FOURTEEN - FROM ALLIGATOR TO AUSTRALIA | |
Page 142 missing
Page 143 missing
... interested in making pendulum observations in Africa. Jobs being scarce and the Depression growing darker, Rutherford advised Edward Bullard to accept the geophysical opening. As would be expected, Bullard, returning to England in 1931, read Edge and Laby's report of the geophysical expedition to Australia with great interest. Before the year 1931 was over, Bullard had persuaded the Department of Geophysics at Cambridge, founded in 192l, to undertake the construction of some electrical seismograph refraction equipment. Edge and Laby had suggested that someone in England should build such instruments and Bullard had put the suggestion into practice. In 1932 and 1933 some funds were forthcoming from the British government and Edward Bullard headed the refraction seismograph survey working a number of areas in the English midland valleys. In 1936, Dr. Maurice Ewing ran some refraction profiles off English shores on the Continental Shelf. Bullard and others began an English refraction expedition on the Continental Shelf, close to England, on July 10, 1938.
During World War To, Sir Edward Bullard was assigned to degaussing experimentation on magnetic mines. He was at the Department of Geophysics at the University of Cambridge from 1945 to 1948, serving as head of the department the last two years. There followed a year as head of the Department of Geophysics at the University of Toronto and five years with the National Physical Laboratory. Bullard then returned to his old job as head of the Department of Geophysics at Cambridge, the position he still occupies. Sir Edward is quite frank in admitting that the English physicists and the English financial interests made a grave error in not combining forces to develop their own reflection seismograph instruments and reflection techniques in petroleum exploration.