Harold Masters
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30 — THE EXAMINER, Saturday, May 13, 2006
i history
Master of all trades
No. 37: A. H.
(Harold) Masters,
by PETER
FORWARD
rthur Harold Masters
was born in Melbourne
in 1874 to parents
Jogeph and Anne Mas-
ters (nee Anderson).
His parents had travelled
from London to Australia as
children on board the frigate-
built ship Clifton in 1849,
arriving in Hobsons Bay, Port i \ ] Wiy @£ 5
Phillip, Victoria, on February
12, 1350. ©® Harold Masters’s photoaraph of the Masters family, picnicking at Cataract Gorge in the
His boyhood was spent at 1890s. Aiice Masters’s parents are on the right.
Albury where his father was a the Launceston Technical house but had engineers come
school principal. Joseph Mas- School (later College); as a out from Germany to install
ters was among the earlier student, then student-teacher, the machinery and get the
students to obtain a MA degree then as instructor of both the plant working. Some time after
at the University of Melbourne architectural/building con- the end of the war, the turbine
and was later to become direc- struction and electricity at Newry did the work until
tor of Education in Tasmania classes, then secretary- the HEC took over in 1926.
and then secretary of the Edu- director until the Education
cation Department until his Another of Harold Masters’s
Department took over in 1915. passions was photography. He
retirement at the age of 70. He then became a member of
Harold Masters married and Frank Styant Browne, a
the college council until his Launceston pharmacist, were
Alice Weymouth on November _ death in April 1951
29, 1899. Alice was a descend- early pioneers in this field.
It was in the late 1890s or One of Harold’s photographs
ant of Dr William Weymouth
early 1900s that he and the records one of the earliest uses
who travelled from London to
students from his electricity of X-ray photography in Aus-
Van Diemens Land as a sur-
geon on a convict ship. Harold class sent the first message in tralia in 1896.
® Harold Masters morse code to be transmitted
and Alice had five children — {Launceston Family in Northern Tasmania to a . The apparatus used to ob-
Muriel, Thelma, Jean, Joyce Album, 1891). naval vessel HMS Pioneer tain the x-ray photograph con-
(who married Edney Forward) sigted of a powerful battery, a
and many of the residences on wihien was ancnored ai Rose-
and Alan (who married vears. transformer and a vacuum
Katherine Will). Elphin Rd and High St, as well
as a number of buginess prem- tube. A large electrical spark
Harold was an architect by Harold was also credited as
ises. being the first in Tasmania to was passed through the vac-
profession, having spent six uum tube, known as a Crooke’s
months in doing voluntary While architecture was his demonstrate communication
Tube, where the X-rays were
work in J. & T. Gunn's carpen- main profession, Harold had a X by means of wireless telegra- generated.
try and joinery department. great ambition to be an electri- phy in late 1898 or early 1899.
cal engineer and he never In 1906 he carried out two- He once used the process to
His constructional ideas X-ray the hand of a woman
were certainly sound and he missed a chance to expand his way experiments with HMS
knowledge in all areas of wire- Pioneer, both on the Tamar who years before had run a
was the first architect to intro- needle into her hand at the
duce the concept of pre- less telegraphy, electric light- River and along the North-
ing and X-ray photography. At West Coast using Telefunken wrist. Some years later, one of
stressed concrete beams to her fingers stiffened and re-
Launceston. 17, he joined Mr Corin’s night equipment obtained from Mel-
school electricity class at bourne. fused to bend. The X-ray photo-
He was the architect respon- graph clearly showed the pos-
gible for many of the fine Launceston Technical School, In late 1909 he submitted a
buildings in Launceston, in- and at 23 had charge of the ition of the broken needle in
scheme to the Longford Coun- her finger and it was removed.
cluding the grandstand at the class on Mr Corin’s retirement cil for lighting the township
in 1897. ® Story contributed by Harold
Mowbray Racecourse, the old with electricity. It was based Masters’s grandson, Peter Forward,
T. & G. Building (now demol- Altogether he had 60 con- on a German formula. He of Hobart, the youngest son of Joyce
ished), Fairlawn in Elphin Rd tinuous years’ association with designed the concrete power- (nee Masters) and Edney Forward.
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