Britain Tiptoes Toward Common Market Negotiations for ECM membership will be tough, although Parliament approved motion to take the step
Prime Minister Harold Macmiiian . . A solid majority and a gentle smile . .
Britain's Prime Minister Harold Mac miiian was called a "national disaster" when he revealed his decision to ask for an application blank to the Euro pean Common Alarket. Although ex treme, this epithet represents some of the resistance in Britain to commit ment to Europe, either politically or economically. Mr. Macmiiian won. But the fond hope that Britain has caught up with itself in its approach to perhaps the most significant political-economic de velopment in Europe's history was dashed on the rocks of factional in terest during the parliamentary debate on the application question. Some members of the reigning Conservative party and the Labor opposition voiced confused objections. ("Stop! Stop! Stop! Impossible under Rome (ECM) Treaty to protect British sovereignty." "What about the Com monwealth?") There are still diehards who have no wish to build any kind of bridge across the narrow chan nel that divides Britain from the Con tinent. When the British government's mo tion to apply for ECM membership was put to a parliamentary vote, Mr. Macmiiian walked away with a solid majority and a gentle smile. But that smile covered a lot of worries about conditions that endanger Britain's chances of ECM membership. An immediate one is the nation's recurrent 36
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balance of payments crises—Britain im ports more than she exports, though this is not true of chemicals. (In 1960, Britain imported $500 million worth of chemicals, exported $900 mil lion worth. ) Recent measures by Chancellor of the Exchequer Selwyn Lloyd to con trol the import-export imbalance in cluded a jump to lc/c in the bank rate to attract short-term money back to London. They also included extra taxes on goods to stop the consumer buying spree and so hold down im ports. The most serious economic measure that Britain has taken so far was an application to the International Mone tary Fund for a $2 billion loan. That sum is only about half a billion short of the $2.5 billion that the government borrowed in 1946. On the world political level, this is no time for Britain to reprimand the activities of ECM members; France and Bizerte is an instance where she held her tongue. France is probably the touchiest and least convinced ECM member about Britain's application. The ECM application will probably be submitted sometime in September, and negotiations will be long and tough. Britain will want some con cessions for her European Free Trade Association and Commonwealth part ners. The ECM council knows this and may negotiate on some BritishEFTA-Commonwealth problems. WThat the ECM council will not toler ate is any demand, or appeal, that
Article
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Any European state may apply to be come a member of the Community. It shall address its application to the Council xohich, after obtaining the opinion of the Commission, shall act by means of a unanimous vote. TJie con ditions of admission and the amend ments to this Treaty necessitated thereby shall be the subject of an agreement between the member states and the applicant state. Such agree ment shall be submitted to all the con tracting states for ratification in ac cordance with their respective consti tutional rides.
might undermine the hard won suc cess of the six ECM members. Whether Britain goes as supplicant or applicant is not too important. Mr. Macmillan's major task will be to re move suspicions among Europeans that Britain wants to dominate or wreck the European Common Market.
Magnetic Flux In Superconductor Is Quantized Quantization indicates that the electrons are paired in couples An important step toward understand ing superconductivity is the result of an experiment carried out by Dr. Wil liam M. Fairbank and Bascom S. Deaver, Jr., of Stanford University's physics department. They have shown that the magnetic flux trapped in hol low superconducting cylinders is quan tized. The quantized unit is H C / 2 E . ( H is Planck's constant; C is the veloc ity of light in vacuum; Ε is the charge on the electron.) A similar experi ment carried out almost simultaneously by Doll and Nabauer at Kommission fur Tieftemperaturfurschung der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Harrsching-Ammersee, Germany, leads to basically the same conclusion. This quantization indicates that the electrons in the superconductor are paired with equal and opposite mo mentum. Such pairing gives a gap in the energy levels in which the elec trons can move without losing energy. Hence the metal is a superconductor. These results' are experimental verifi cation of the theory proposed about four years ago by Dr. John Bardeen and co-workers at the University of Illinois (C&EN, Dec. 23, 1957, page 20). Dr. Lars Onsager and the late Dr. Fritz London had predicted that a flux in a superconducting cylinder might be quantized in units of H C / E . The fact that the quantum unit ob served is half that size leads to the idea that the electrons in the super conductor are paired. This interpre tation is made by Dr. Onsager, Dr. Nina Byers, and Dr. Chen Ning Yang. A report by Dr. Deaver and Mr. Fairbank on their experiment appears in Physical Revieio Letters, July 15, page 43. The interpretation by Dr. Onsager appears on page 50 and that
of Dr. Byers and Dr. Yang on page 46 of the same issue of the journal. Tin Cylinders. Although the unit of quantized flux is small (2.07 X 10~7 gauss per square centimeter) it can be measured readily if the area to which it is confined is small enough. In their work, Dr. Fairbank and Mr. Deaver used extremely small hollow tin cylinders. These were made by electroplating tin in about a 1-centimeter length on very thin (about 0.013-mm. diameter) copper wire. The cylinders have a wall thickness of about 0.01 mm. and are protected by a jacket of electroplated copper. The cylinder is placed in a fieldfree region obtained by using three mutually orthogonal coils to neutralize the earth's magnetic field. A known magnetic field is applied by means of a coil and the tiny cylinder is cooled below the superconducting transition temperature (3.7° K.) with liquid helium. When the magnetic field is turned off, a current is produced in the superconducting tin cylinder. And this current is measured by the magnetic flux which it produces. The flux is detected by moving the cylinder up and down for a small distance at a frequency of 100 times per second and observing the electrical pickup in two minute coils surrounding the ends of the cylinder. Dr. Fairbank and Mr. Deaver find that the trapped flux does not increase linearly with the applied field, but rather goes up in steps. For example, in one experiment no flux was trapped as the applied field was varied from 0 to about 0.08 gauss. At this level, and remaining constant up to an applied field of about 0.24 gauss, the trapped flux was equal to H C / 2 E . It then jumped to twice H C / 2 E , and so on.
Diamond-Chemical Process Merger Off for Present The Diamond Alkali-Chemical Process merger has hit another snag. This one comes from the Internal Revenue Service. 1RS has refused to rule that the exchange of stock necessary to bring about the merger is nontaxable. Such a ruling was a condition of the original merger agreement between boards of the two companies (C&EN, May 29, page 19).
The 1RS ruling came after large blocks of Chemical Process stock had changed hands during a battle between Diamond and Commercial Solvents for control of the West Coast chemical firm (C&EN, Aug. 7, page 2 5 ) . Because the stock exchange could be declared taxable, Chemical Process directors have withdrawn their recommendation that stockholders accept the proposed merger. The Chemical Process board will meet before the stockholders meeting, scheduled for Aug. 15, and probably will terminate the agreement of merger then. Plans now call for directors' action on the merger to be disclosed at that time. Diamond now controls 80% of Chemical Process stock and had an offer, good until the close of business Friday, Aug. 11, to buy CP stock at $15 per share. With its 80% interest, Diamond could operate the company as a subsidiary. But it hasn't decided yet what action it will take, a company spokesman says.
Spencer Acquires Third Packaging Supplier Acquisition of Wrapture, Inc., of New York City marks the third move by Spencer Chemical into the flexible packaging materials business in about a month. Last month, Spencer acquired Flexicraft Industries, also of New York, and Crystal Tube Corp., Chicago (C&EN, July 24, page 2 7 ) . Last month, too, Spencer completed plans to acquire Perkins Glue Co., marking its initial entry into the adhesives business (C&EN, Aug. 7, page 19). Like Flexicraft and Crystal, Wrapture converts polyethylene, cellophane, acetate, foils, laminates, and other flexible materials into printed bags and roll stock for packaging. It will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Spencer, with its president, Samuel Rivman, continuing to manage its business. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Although Spencer president J. C. Denton says that Spencer has no plans to make plastic films itself, he feels that the company's forward integration toward consumers of packaging will give it firsthand knowledge of value in developing new resins for use in the $550 million flexible packaging market.
Curbs on Library Photocopying Proposed Photocopying of copyrighted articles in scientific and technical journals should not be permitted if it would compete with the publisher's market, says the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress in a report titled "Copyright Law Revision." However, libraries should be permitted to supply a single photocopy of an article to a research worker provided certain conditions are met. This report is the last in a series of studies made by the Library of Congress in preparation for a general revision of the copyright law. Rep. Emanuel Celler (D.-N.Y.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, hopes that the report will stimulate interested persons to forward their comments to the committee to help in drafting a bill to revise the law. According to the Copyright Office, the law should be changed to permit a library whose collections are available to the public without charge to supply a single photocopy of copyrighted material to any applicant under these conditions: • If the applicant states in writing that he needs and will use the material solely for his own research, a copy of one article may be supplied. • If the applicant states in writing that a copy is not available from the publisher, a copy of an entire publication may be supplied. Photocopies furnished under these conditions would not seriously prejudice the interests of the copyright owner, the Copyright Office says. On the other hand, the Copyright Office says, industrial firms who make multiple copies of scientific articles available to members of their research staffs may make serious inroads on a publisher's market. And firms who furnish photocopies to others as a commercial venture compete directly with the publisher. The best solution to this problem in the opinion of the Copyright Office would be for publishers to make contracts with industrial firms giving them blanket authority to make photocopies on payment of a royalty. Such an arrangement is already in effect in one foreign country, the office says. Copies of the report may be obtained for 45 cents from: Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C. AUG.
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