New Zealander Major Frank Holmes in the Middle East is still known as Abu Naft, the father of oil.

HASTINGS, HAWKE'S BAY, NEW ZEALAND, December 19, 2014 /EINPresswire.com/ -- New Zealanders Founded Oil and Computer Services Industries

New Zealand's reluctance to celebrate its industrial heroes is decried by the nation's Trade Minister Tim Groser among others.

Some believe that the pre-eminence of Ernest Rutherford, the father of atomic physics sucked all the oxygen out of the ones that followed. Several did, including two New Zealanders who invented the petroleum industry and the computer services industries as we know them today.

New Zealander Major Frank Holmes in the Middle East is still known as Abu Naft, the father of oil. It was Holmes who in the inter-war period recognised the extent of oil reserves there and put in motion the engineering mechanics of extracting them.

Fellow New Zealander and contemporary Leslie John Comrie in the 1920s opened in London the world's first computing bureau. He expanded rapidly during World War 2 when the RAF outsourced the calculation of bombing statistics.

Maurice Wilkins was born in New Zealand's remote Wairarapa Valley and was the third man, with Crick and Watson, in the discovery of DNA.

A second Nobel prize winner and near contemporary was also born in this valley, Alan MacDiarmid. MacDiarmid's work in the conductivity of polymers led to the development of the electric toothbrush, among other products.

Major Frank Holmes and Leslie John Comrie have quite literally been forgotten in the passage of time in the land of their birth. Wilkins' contribution is evoked as an addendum to articles on the double helix.



Isaac on Industry with Peter Isaac © MSCNewsWire

Max Farndale
Manufacturers Success Connection
64 6 870 4506
email us here