burgess: science and after- war period 63 



group of scientific men, however it may be elsewhere, to state 

 that standardization necessarily involves research, often very 

 elaborate and costly. 



INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH 



The relation of science to industry has been a fruitful subject 

 for discussion in recent years both here and abroad and nowhere 

 has the question of industrial research, as it is often called, 

 been cultivated more intensively and made more progress as a 

 direct result of the war than in Great Britain; and it may be 

 of interest to mention briefly some of the steps in the progress. 



Following the economic congress of the Allied Nations at 

 Paris, there was formed in July, 1916, a committee, presided 

 over by Lord Burleigh, on commercial and industrial policy 

 after the war, and the reports emanating from this body and its 

 auxiliaries cover the whole field of the economic aspects — in- 

 dustrial, commercial, technical, and scientific — of the after- 

 war period, and lay particular emphasis, for example, on the 

 protection and development of "key" or "pivotal" industries, 

 most of them requiring the highest grade of scientific and technical 

 skill for their maintenance and advancement, such as synthetic 

 drugs, optical glass, chemical glassware and porcelain, dye- 

 stuffs, magnetos, high explosives, etc. 



It is of interest to note in passing that the questions of decimal 

 coinage and the compulsory use of the metric system of weights 

 and measures were also considered and their adoption not ad- 

 vised. The arguments advanced for this conservative stand, 

 if valid, are of a nature that would seem to make it difficult 

 ever to make the metric system universal. A transition period 

 like the present has precedent for the establishment of such a 

 simpHfication of units and standards; for the metric system 

 originated during the French Revolution and the International 

 Bureau was founded at the time of the war of 1870. 



There has since been established in England a Ministry of 

 Reconstruction to deal with the numerous problems the transi- 

 tion period presents. A Department of Scientific and Industrial 

 Research with a Parhamentary Secretary has also been created 



