SUPPORT BY INDUSTRY 



virtue in this or any other held. Of course, freedom for the 

 scientists to pursue the trail of new scientific knowledge, wher- 

 ever it leads, and the absence of pressure for early practical 

 results are essential to good basic research. However, I do not 

 believe it should detract from the basic character of a given 

 project if a scientist or an industrial laboratory chooses to work 

 in a held where new fundamental knowledge might prove to 

 have important practical significance. Certainly, if selecting 

 the general field of work because of its possible practical interest 

 bars a given line of research from classification as basic, it would 

 disqualify much of the good basic work that industry is carrying 

 out in its own laboratories. 



Two general characteristics of industry research give 

 encouraging testimony to its growing appreciation of the im- 

 portance of basic research. These are: first, the fact that the 

 longer an industry has been engaged in research, the more it 

 is currently doing in the basic areas; and second, that the 

 older and larger industrial laboratories in the country are, almost 

 without exception, doing a substantially larger proportion of 

 basic research than the many newer laboratories in the same 

 industries. Laboratories such as those of General Electric, Ameri- 

 can Telephone and Telegraph, and du Pont are but a few of 

 many examples of this trend. This may be due, in part, to the 

 newer laboratories not having yet approached exhaustion of 

 the basic information in their respective fields, but I think the 

 more important factors are that, as a laboratory approaches 

 maturity and acquires a well-rounded staff, the laboratory man- 

 agement appreciates more fully the debt it owes to basic re- 

 search, and understands that to make really important new 

 advances, basic new knowledge is necessary. Furthermore, the 

 larger and older laboratories arc, in general, working closer to 

 the frontiers of their particular fields of science, and that makes 

 the importance of basic research more apparent to them. It is 



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