Joining nations 1947-1990

42

JOINING NATIONS

The attendance at the Stockholm Assembly was nearly 900 and the Treasurer was able to report that the Institute's reserves stood at more than £i 5 ooo, or the equivalent of one year's expenditure, while the proportion of the total income derived from the subscriptions of member countries had been reduced to less than 44 °/o . The soundness of the IIW's financial position in 197 1 was not reflected in that of the Bibliographical Bulletin. As in previous years, the French Welding Institute had to meet a deficit of the order of £8000, while the replies to the inquiry launched in 1970 showed that few member countries were interested in participating in a modern IIW documentation centre. Consequently, the French del– egation decided to cease the publication of the Bulletin and Commis– sion VII to restrict its bibliographical activities to work on an IIW thesaurus. This situation was greeted with consternation by the Governing Council which considered that it was an obligation for the IIW to ensure international co-operation in welding documentation. Accordingly the Executive Council was invited to set up a select committee under the chairmanship of the President to try to resolve this problem. Among the members of this Committee was Professor H G Geer– lings who had been appointed President-Elect at Stockholm. Profes– sor Geerlings was another pioneer of the IIW and the first Chairman of the original Commission IX Weldability and after 1954 Vice– Chairman of the new Commission IX Behaviour of Metals Subjected to Welding, on which he continued to give effective service under a succession of Chairmen. Although he became a professor at Delft at the end of his career, Professor Geerlings had spent most of his working life as welding engineer with the Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. He was thus a man accustomed to taking decisions with far– reaching implications and to giving due emphasis to their financial and economic consequences. His experience in industry was reflected in his approach to the Presidency of the IIW and it is ironic that, through a combination of circumstances over which he had little or no control, a serious downturn in the IIW's financial position began at the close of his term of office. No such worries were in the mind of the Governing Council in 1972 when in Toronto one of the most convinced and effective ambassadors of the IIW was succeeded as Treasurer by another. The first was Dr H Sossenheimer (Germany) who, shortly after the Annual Assembly in Essen in 1957, had been appointed Director of the German Welding Society (DVS), a position which he was to hold