Christopher Alwyne Jack Young was born in Calne, Wiltshire on the 7th March 1912, and educated at Colston's School, Bristol, 1926-1930, and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, 1930-1934. He left Oxford to become a temporary master at Radley College in the Easter term of 1934, moving for the Summer term to Cheltenham College where he stayed until 1938. In 1938 he became an assistant meteorologist in the Sudan Government Service, resigning in 1940 to volunteer as a pilot in coastal command. He was recommended instead to join Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd Engineering Department at Billingham where he worked on various wartime projects including FIDO (Fog Intensive Dispersal Operation) and the
Tube Alloys (Atomic Bomb) project. In 1946 he became the first Director of the Central Instrument Section (later the Central Instrument Laboratory) of the Company. His health forced him to relinquish the Directorship in 1971 and he accepted the advisory post of Technical Director to the ICI Corporate Laboratory which was formed by merging the Central Instrument Research Laboratory at Bazedown with the Petrochemical and Polymer Laboratory at Runcorn in 1972. He retired from ICI in 1973.
The Central Instrument Laboratory was originally set up as a general research and development section to service all divisions. In the 1950s Young decided to concentrate the work of the laboratory on the design of process control systems. His objective was that process, plant and control equipment should be designed as one unified system
to eradicate the practice of adding the control equipment on as an afterthought to a plant already designed. In order to achieve this he directed the laboratory towards the target of predicting the dynamic behaviour of chemical processes at the design stage, and introduced the concept of the mathematical model to describe any system under consideration. He sought to ensure that the Company took advantage of the most recent developments in the computer industry. He encouraged research into a new high level language specially designed for on-line computer applications, and a
novel system of interface instrumentation, both of which were designed to reduce costs and thus improve the practical possibilities of implementing a complete on-line system. He was elected FRS in 1973.
He died on the 20th January 1978.
Date
1930-1973
Scope and ContentComprises biographical and personal papers; papers relating to his work at ICI Central Instrument Research Laboratory - material on lectures, academic papers, publications and conferences and correspondence.
Imperial Chemical Industries plc came into existence in 1926, following the merger of Nobel Industries Ltd, Brunner, Mond and Company Ltd, the United Alkali Company, and the British Dyestuffs Corporation. The new company was called Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. Its operations began in 1927, with 33,000 people employed in five main product areas: alkali products, explosives, metals, general chemicals, and dyestuffs. In 1928, its head office opened in Millbank, London. The former British Dyestuffs Corporation works at Blackley, Manchester became the home of ICI's Dyestuffs Division. The main factory for the General Chemicals Division was at Billingham, County Durham.
ICI's Research and Development Department developed a number of significant products in the early 20th century, including the acrylic plastic Perspex in 1932, Dulux paint (in partnership with DuPont) in 1932, polyethylene in 1937 and polyethylene terephthalate fibre (known as Terylene and PET) in 1941.
The work on polyethylene was led by the Dyestuffs Division at Blackley until a new Plastics Division was established at Welwyn Garden City in 1937. In 1971, the Dyestuffs Division merged with parts of the Nobel Division to become known as the Organics Division. Later mergers with other specialty chemical producers created ICI Colours and Fine Chemicals, which then became ICI Specialties.
From 1940, ICI Dyestuffs was involved in the manufacture of Nylon fabrics at its Huddersfield plant, and in 1964 the company established ICI Fibres to manage its successful textile, fibres and Nylon production. The Nylon part of the business was sold to DuPont in 1992.
In 1944, as Imperial Chemical (Pharmaceuticals) Ltd, the company was involved in the development of penicillin at its Trafford Park works. Because of its success with pharmaceuticals, the company established ICI Pharmaceuticals in 1957. In 1993, ICI Pharmaceuticals and other bioscience divisions became Zeneca, along with ICI Specialties. Zeneca merged with Astra AB in 1994 to form Astra Zeneca Plc.
General Chemical production continued until the acquisition of ICI by Akzo Nobel in 2007.
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