Earl of Airlie. He had worked with Johnson when they had been in charge of civil defence, and had initially been critical of the 1943 Act because its scope was too limited. The deputy chairman and chief executive was Edward MacColl, an engineer with wide experience of hydro-electric projects and electrical distribution networks. His was the only full-time post. Neil Beaton had previously been a member of the Cooper Committee, Hugh Mackenzie was the Provost of Inverness, and the final member was the Central Electricity Board nominee, Walter Whigham, who was also a director of the Bank of England. Ill health led to him being replaced by the engineer Sir Duncan Watson soon afterwards. Shortly after the conception of the board, Major Gwilym Lloyd George, the Minister for Fuel and Power, led a committee which considered how electricity supply could be rationalised in Britain. Johnson argued that his proposals would destroy the principles of the 1943 Act, and eventually ensured that the Hydro-Electric Board was excluded from them. Some initial work under the Act was carried out by civil servants, but the Board took office in January 1944, and moved into a permanent office in Rothesay Terrace, Edinburgh a few weeks later. MacColl knew how to build up new organisations, and assembled a group of enthusiastic engineers around him, all of whom were relatively young. It was a fairly small team, and they were always over-worked. MacColl then invited five engineers, drawn from major engineering consultancies, to consider how the aims of the Act could be implemented. This constituted the Panel of Technical Advisers, and they became an important and permanent part of the Board's activities for fifteen years. The headquarters of the board in Rothesay Terrace, Edinburgh were located outside the board's operating area. The 1943 Act specified the management board was to comprise a chairman and not less than four and not more than eight members. The Board in 1958 comprised: Thomas Johnston (Chairman), Sir Hugh Mackenzie (Deputy Chairman), Sir John Erskine, Sir George McGlashan, A.I. Mackenzie, A. Macrae, I.A. Duncan Millar, William Hughes, John Jardine. When the UK electricity supply industry was nationalised in 1948, the board took over the assets of the Grampian Electricity Supply Company and other bodies producing electricity in the northern part of Scotland, these were: Campbeltown and Mid-Argyll, Crieff, Dunoon and District, Loch Leven, North of Scotland, Peterhead, Stornoway, Thurso and District,