Those members of the Committee 

 who fa\or taking some positi\ e action 

 to help launch new scientific enter- 

 prises bcheve that greater opportuni- 

 ties should be pro\'icled to indi\iduals 

 who are primarily interested in new 

 applications of recent advances in 

 pure science rather than in basic in- 

 quiry itself. This thought has been 

 elaborated by one of the members 

 of the Committee in the following 

 terms: 



The country needs new types of indus- 

 trial activity. We should not be satisfied 

 with the cvcle of displacement of one good 

 technical product made of metal by the 

 same product made of plastic, and so on, 

 in a rather unimaginative utilization of 

 fundamental developments. What is re- 

 quired is the rapid invention and evolu- 

 tion of the peacetime analogues of jet- 

 propelled vehicles, bazookas, and the mul- 

 tiplicity of secret, bold developments of the 

 war. 



New types of industrial activity could 

 be aided if students of engineering and 

 science were strongly encouraged at the 

 undergraduate stage to study unsolved 

 technical problems and to invent solutions 

 for them. On graduation those young men 

 who wish to strike out for themselves 

 should have the opportunity to complete 

 their inventions, both theoretically and 

 practically, in an actual enterprise. In 

 large industrial organizations which pro- 

 vide the principal outlet for such men 

 there is a long path of duty which the 

 young scientist must pursue before he can 

 become very effective in original contribu- 

 tion. Furthermore, most large industrial 

 concerns are limited by policy to special 

 directions of expansion within the well- 

 established field of activity of the com- 

 pany. On the other hand, most small 

 companies do not have the resources or 

 the facilities to support "scientific pros- 

 pecting." Thus the young man leaving 

 the university with a proposal for a new 

 kind of industrial activity is frequently not 

 able to find a matrix for the development 

 of his ideas in any established industrial 

 organization. 



Neither is it always satisfactory that 

 such a potential scientific entrepreneur 

 remain in the university for graduate work. 

 The Ph.D. degree in the American univer- 

 sity may not best fit a man for such a 

 career; it makes him a good scholar but 

 may dampen his early leanings in the di- 

 rection of the commercial development of 

 his ideas. 



The Committee was not able to 

 agree on a solution to this problem. 

 The matter was regarded as of suffi- 

 cient importance, however, to justify 

 careful investigation by the National 

 Research Foundation in the hope that 

 it might be able to devise special 

 methods and techniques of encour- 

 aging young scientists in the de- 

 velopment of their inventions and 

 in the launching of new scientific 

 enterprises. 



D. Strengthening the Patent System 



Patents are the life of research. No 

 study of the aids to research or the 

 incentives to research would be com- 

 plete without an inquiry into the 

 manner in which the patent laws and 

 the patent system of this country 

 might be strengthened. The Com- 

 mittee has given its attention to this 

 important problem and has advised 

 Dr. Bush informally of its views on 

 this subject. 



No detailed recommendations on 

 the patent aspects of research are 

 herein contained since Dr. Bush is 

 independently making a study of this 

 problem looking to a separate report 

 to the President. This Committee 

 wishes to emphasize, however, the 

 very vital importance of a strong 

 patent system to the development of 

 new and active small enterprises and 

 the stimulation of healthy scientific 

 research. 



109 



