Digitisation of an ANU invention

Professor Mervyn Paterson started the design and construction of the first High Pressure, High Temperature (HPT) rock deformation apparatus in 1960 but it was not until 1988, when Paterson was in the Department of Geophysics in the Research School of Earth Sciences, that Paterson Instruments Pty Ltd was formed to manufacture the apparatus as a commercial activity. Over the next twenty years, 13 were manufactured and sold to universities and research institutions in the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Germany, Switzerland and China. Digitised copies of Paterson’s original drawings, his laboratory notebooks (including calculations, notes and designs) and log books relating to the assembly of the 13 machines are now accessible in the ANU Open Research repository. The copying of the originals held by the ANU Archives was funded by US National Science Foundation grant EAR 1649412 and arranged by the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Minnesota.