Dear Donald,

35 Belgrave Street, SKIPTON,

North Yorks., 8023 1QB

4th April 1995

As usual, please accept my apologies for long delay in replying, particularly in view of your invitation to visit Cambridge.

The delay was due to two causes. Firstly, I had had no reply from my German friend about the enclosed text.

Secondly, because I had been hoping to meet you in Sweden at the Conference, to attend which I applied after details arrived in the HMS Newsletter.

I received my German friend's reply yesterday, but have no news out of Sweden - I expect they are having difficulty in alloting applicants between the various kinds on accommodation.

My German friend thought she could not improve on my transJation. liowevAr we are neither of us met8llurgists, so she contacted the Librarian of the Verein der Giessereifachleute. My friend found the translation excellent, but thought Johannsen was probably right in assessing 'half a man's height' as 3/4 m (2 ft 6in), in which case that footnote just needs deleting. Are you cognisant of such things? The Librarian thought that the diifcult three lines probably related to the solidification process -and note, when you pour metal from the ladle, if it is

,,.--to run sharp and clean, then the hotter the metal is, the flatter (the surface), and the farther (from the ladle) away it cools, the better'. The Librarian also suggested that 'nach hin' might be intended in the temporal sense of 'later on'. With regard to 'Plateriger', she suggested that when fluid materials solidify, a hollow (the German word looks like 'Lunker', but is not in my 2 vol. dictionary) often forms which has to be filled in or worked out, and that possibly the great heat recommended was designed to reduce this phenomenon.

Your thoughts on these matters would be appreciated. You may also wish to query the use of the term 'regulus' as also other things that would not occur to me. Over to you.

Today I am off to London, where I was hoping to arrange foreign currency, payment of the conference expences, as well as book my trip, in between spending four days in the East Sussex Record Office. However, it begins to look as though I shall not manage to get to Sweden, in which case I will see if I can fit in a visit to Cambridge in June.

Yours sincerely

P.S. I was very sorry to read of Professor Needham's death. It hardly seems possible that he is no longer with us. I hope contingency plans were made to carry on the work.