ROBERT E. WILSON 



A crisis arose when these five-year gifts ended at a very 

 unfortunate time — in the depression year of 1 93 1 . By this time, 

 however, the value and the propriety of cooperative research 

 on fundamental problems were better appreciated, and the 

 Institute agreed to continue the program on a reduced scale, 

 and to raise funds on a voluntary basis from the industry. For 

 the next five more-or-less depression years the expenditures 

 averaged only about one third of the $ioo,ooo-a-year budget 

 of the first five years, and it was deemed necessary to concentrate 

 on a few of the more important projects — selecting the institu- 

 tions and project directors who had shown particular ability to 

 get results. 



Since that time the scope of the work has expanded almost 

 every year until in this fiscal year it includes about thirty 

 projects at an annual cost of $908,000. So far as I can judge, 

 it has the wholehearted support of the entire industry — last year 

 eighty-two companies contributed to its budget. 



Of course, the purists might complain that many of these 

 programs, designed to secure fundamental data pertaining to 

 the constituents of petroleum and their reactions, should hardly 

 be classed as true basic research. But when you consider the 

 industry's pitiful lack of information, even as late as 1926, 

 about the origin and composition of its basic raw material, to 

 say nothing about what really takes place in the various processes 

 of refining it, you will realize that it had to start virtually at the 

 beginning. The growing store of information was welcomed and 

 published by the scientific press. Our present program is much 

 more basic, though it is still oriented largely in the direction of 

 learning more about the origin, composition, and fundamental 

 properties of the hydrocarbons and other substances present in 

 the enormously complicated mixture known as petroleum. 



This A.P.I, program (all the results of which are published 

 promptly) has yielded to date some 913 scientific and technical 



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