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The vision and pioneering spirit of Dr HJ van der Bijl led to the establishment of Eskom and Iscor.

A surprising number of transformational inventions involve transport – of people, goods and especially information. The radio was one of the first groundbreaking communication tools, before television, the internet and social media, and a South African played a key role in the development of one of its most important components, the thermionic valve.

In electronics, a thermionic valve is a device that relies on the flow of an electric current through a vacuum. Electrodes placed between the cathode and anode in the valve can alter the current, which gives it the ability to amplify or switch electrical signals.

Valves were critical to the development of electronic technology, which drove the expansion of radio as well as television, radar, telephony and analog and digital computing. In most applications, thermionic valves have now been replaced by solid-state devices that last longer and are smaller, more reliable and cheaper.

Hendrik Johannes van der Bijl was born in Pretoria in 1887 but was educated in Franschhoek and Stellenbosch, where he was one of the most brilliant scholars at Victoria College. After graduating with honours in physics, chemistry and mathematics, he furthered his studies in Germany, where he worked under the famous Professor Hallwachs, pioneer of the photo-electric cell. He investigated the rate at which electrons are emitted from metals under the influence of ultra-violet light, and invented a device to measure this phenomenon.

His research caught the attention of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (ATT), and he soon took up employment with them and was tasked with improving and finding uses for Lee de Forest’s pioneering “audion”, an early thermionic valve. To his astonishment, he found that he had been handed almost precisely the device that he had invented in Germany.

Very quickly, Van der Bijl improved the design, developed what became known as the Van der Bijl Equation, and developed practical uses for it. His improved thermionic valve soon made long-distance radio broadcasts possible and was the standard design used worldwide for the next 20 years.

During his time in the US (1913-1920) he also invented the scrambler telephone and a process for sending photographs by wire.

In 1920 the then SA Prime Minister, General Jan Smuts, persuaded him to return to SA and become the scientific adviser to the government. After a period of intense frustration with government bureaucracy, Van der Bijl produced his first grand vision in 1922: a master plan for the creation of a public utility company that would generate and supply electricity on a non-profit basis and help to establish industries by providing cheap power.

His plan was described as “utopian” and “unachievable”, but he succeeded in establishing Eskom in record time. This initiative is widely regarded as the biggest single factor in the development of industrial SA.

But Van der Bijl was not satisfied. He believed from the outset that the twin pillars on which our industrial future should be built are cheap power and locally manufactured steel. Again, the experts said he was “mad”, the man who was attacking private enterprise and would bankrupt the state. But once again he succeeded, against all odds, and created a local steel-making industry through Iscor.

Within five years SA was producing the cheapest steel in the world.

During World War II Van der Bijl was appointed director-general of war supplies, an enormously influential office, while also acting as chairman of Eskom, Iscor, Amcor and Vecom, yet he managed to play golf twice a week! His handicap was 14 and nothing in physics or chemistry could bring it down.

He was subsequently elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London but tragically his life was cut short at the age of 60 by cancer.

One of this practical yet heroic man’s most famous aphorisms was: “I think South Africa needs more people and less politics.”

Right again!

* Mike Bruton was the founding director of the Cape Town Science Centre and is director of imagineering at MTE Studios. He wrote Great South African Inventions, published by Cambridge University Press