| dc.description.abstract | A brief historical survey of the work leading up to the
present study.
The world sheep population is in the vicinity of seven
hundred millions and the vast majority of these animals are kept,
to a greater or a lesser degree, for their wool. It is, therefore,
not surprising that Wool Research is by no means new. The
production of sheep for their coat has been, as Barker points
out ( 1), of importance since Biblical times and, although during
the last epoch, with the perfection of methods for meat preservation,
the importance of wool to the sheep industry has decreased,
the need for wool research has been increased by the ever growing perfection of synthetic fibres.
Wool research as such can possibly be dated from
Dr. Hook who, in 1664, presented a paper to the Royal Society on
the subject of wool and hair structure, but it was not until the
advent of the compound microscope that the study of wool gained
sufficient precision for measurements to be made. Such measurements
opened the door for the wool physicist who, by the application
of x-rays and other physical methods, has been able to
explore with considerable success the ultimate structure of wool
and hair.
The value of wool has been determined, at least
partially, by its length and thickness (or width), and thus
measurements of wool in three dimensions have been important
sections of wool research. As other valuable characters were
recognised and evaluated they also were measured and correlations
worked out. Thus it has come about that wool research has
collected about itself innumerable patient measurements -
measurements that have often merely evidenced the complexity of
the fleece of the sheep as a subject of research. | en_US |
