It is that wonderful time of the year when we think about summer
holidays or escaping to the beach or the seaside for an afternoon swim. I love the water, I love being near it and in
it.
The next best thing to going to the beach is having a back
yard pool. The man who invented a
backyard pool was a genius. And the man
who invented a way to keep the pool clean was brilliant!
And what if I told you, that you could thank a Palin for
keeping our pools clean!
Arthur Thomas Palin was born in the Crewe district
of Cheshire in 1916 to Arthur Palin and Annie Hall. His early experience in water quality testing and
control was in the service of the London Midland &
Scottish Railway Co. His work involved the supervision of the water supplies to
a number of large railway towns in the U. K., and included checking the purity
of the water supply to the Royal Train.
In 1940 he married Mildred
Hancock in Crewe and started a new job with the city of Coventry as their first
waterworks chemist. His job was to supervise the wartime operation
of the emergency water supply. The treatment problems in converting
contaminated raw water sources into drinkable water stimulated his interest in
the application of new and safer methods of water treatment.
It was this need for a greater understanding of the
process that triggered Dr. Palin’s classic work on chlorination chemistry and
his development of new test procedures. It was at this time that he began
developing a simple and reliable purity test, which can be used to check the
safety of drinking water, as well as the water in swimming pools and sewers to
give maximum efficiency in disinfection with minimum production of unwanted
side effects such as objectionable tastes and odors in drinking water and compounds
in swimming pool water that cause eye irritation.
He developed a
system based upon the use of standardized test tablets, applicable to the
treatment control of potable water, swimming pools, sewages and effluents,
boiler waters and industrial waters of all types. Wilkinson & Simpson, now Palintest
Ltd. contributed to the development of the tablet
tests, and in 1960 were granted an exclusive license to manufacture and market
the Palintest System of water testing. Palintest is now an international business with offices in
China, Australia, Middle East and the USA..
He also developed a test for testing
fluoride in water. You can see the patent here.
"Tom" Palin retired
from his position with Newcastle and Gateshead Water Co. in 1977 and joined the
Palintest Board. That year saw the inauguration by the company of a new River
Tyne Abstraction Scheme. Included in the scheme were new central laboratories,
which were named the Palin Laboratories in acknowledgement of Palin’s
contributions.
Other recognitions
of Arthur Thomas Palin’s work include a Gold Medal at the Public Works
Congress of 1950, and in the Honours list of 1975 he was given an OBE. At the
AWWA conference of 1979, he was made an Honorary Member. He was also awarded
the Houston Medal of the Institution of Water Engineers for work of outstanding
merit for his work on fluoridation control methods.
Arthur Thomas Palin’s contributions
to technical literature have appeared in Canada, Japan, Spain, France, Germany,
the U.S. and the U.K. He held a first class degree from London University, was
awarded a Ph.D. for his chlorination research and was a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Chemistry. He was an official advisor to the Standard Methods
Committee of the AWWA, and an active member of several of its joint task groups
and the Research and Water Quality Disinfection committees.
Dr. Arthur Thomas
Palin died June 2006, leaving a widow, two children, six
grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
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