hip on 1 June 1917 and evacuated to England. Bassett's injury required him to use a walking stick for the remainder of his life. He was declared unfit for future service and his employment ceased on 28 January 1918. Academic career Bassett returned to Melbourne and studied aeronautics. He joined the faculty of the University of Melbourne's engineering school in 1919, lecturing in mechanical engineering and aerodynamics. At Melbourne Bassett arranged the construction of the first wind tunnel in Australia. He married the historian Marnie Bassett in a Methodist ceremony at the university rooms of her father, Sir David Orme Masson, on 25 January 1923. They had two sons and a daughter; the eldest son drowned during the Second World War. Bassett received a master of mechanical engineering degree from the University of Melbourne in 1927. Bassett received the university's Kernot Memorial Medal in 1948. Bassett also helped to establish aeronautical engineering degree courses in Sydney and helped establish the Aeronautical Research Laboratories at Melbourne in 1949. In 1958 he was appointed to the interim council of the Monash University, which was then under construction. He sat on its building committee and was much involved in its planning. Bassett was a member of its first formal council and served as an engineering lecturer until 1973. Bassett received an honorary doctorate in engineering from the university in 1970 and, one in laws from the University of Melbourne in 1974. Engineering practice During his early academic career Bassett maintained a private engineering practice which was consulted on heating and ventilation matters by architects of prestigious buildings such as the chapter house at St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, the Frankston Orthopaedic Hospital, the Melbourne Town Hall and the Williamstown Town Hall. Bassett established a full-time engineering firm with two staff in 1928, establishing W. E. Bassett & Partners, though he also remained a member of the university faculty until 1957. He maintained a focus on heating and ventilation services, providing design and supervision for systems in numerous hospitals, offices and G.J. Coles stores. He pioneered designs such as a carbon dioxide–based air conditioning system used at the Bank of New South Wales headquarters in Melbourne and installed the first centrifugal air conditioning systems in Australia at Parliament House, Adelaide, and The Courier-Mail offices in Brisbane. By 1939 he had expanded with offices in New South Wales. During the Second World War Bassett served as