Superconductivity at CSIRO (Sydney)
1969-2009

John C. Macfarlane

Honorary Research Fellow,
CSIRO CMSE, Bradfield Road, Lindfield NSW 2070, Australia.

E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract - This essay, prepared in recognition of the 2011 Superconductivity Centenary Year, gives an impression of work at CSIRO, Sydney, Australia, in the field of superconducting devices, with which the author was associated for a period of 40 years. Starting from the establishment of cryogenic facilities in the 1950s, work on superconductivity gained strength from the initiation of the Josephson voltage standard in 1969. Rapid expansion of the effort in high-precision metrology continued through the 1970s and was given a further stimulus from the high-T_c revolution in 1987. Applications in geomagnetic prospecting, high-frequency detectors and THz imaging are described.

Keywords - superconductivity, metrology, Josephson effect, fundamental constants, quantum standard, SQUID, geomagnetic exploration

Received January 19, 2011; accepted January 27, 2011.  Reference No. RN17; Categories: 4, 13.
This paper is based on author’s paper originally published in "Australian Physics" 47, No. 2, 50-54 and No. 3, 88 (2010).