176 THE PATH OF SCIENCE 



The prototype of another kind of organization for the ap- 

 plication of science to industry is the Mellon Institute of the 

 University of Pittsburgh. Laboratories of the type of the 

 Mellon Institute may perhaps be distinguished as technologi- 

 cal research institutes, since their work is primarily in tech- 

 nology rather than in pure science.* 



At the end of the nineteenth century, the governments of 

 the world started to support a limited amount of scientific 

 research. The oldest government-supported research is that 

 of the observatories, of which the first was Greenwich Ob- 

 servatory, founded in 1675 and supported on a very parsi- 

 monious scale by the British government ever since, the head 

 of the institution enjoying the title of Astronomer Royal. 

 During the nineteenth century the federal government of the 

 United States created the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the 

 Naval Observatory, the Department of Agriculture, and the 

 Geological Survey. On the whole, these institutions ^vere 

 devoted primarily to the application of science, although the 

 Bureau of Standards, founded in 1901, and the British Na- 

 tional Physical Laboratory, founded in 1899, like the Reichs- 

 anstalt, organized by the German government after the 

 Franco-Prussian War, carry out much basic research in 

 physics in addition to their primary task of maintaining the 

 physical standards used in commerce and industry. 



At the beginning of the twentieth century, a new factor 

 entered the field of pure science. This was the creation of 

 two privately endowed institutions— the Carnegie Institution 

 in Washington and the Rockefeller Institute. From the for- 

 tunes that supplied the funds for them came also the Rocke- 

 feller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation. The great 

 sums available from these sources, no less than the wise judg- 

 ment of those who administered the sums, have enabled them 

 to make the greatest contributions to the progress of science 

 not only in America but also throughout the world. The 

 Carnegie Institution, particularly, originated a new type of 



* Chapter IX, p. 214. 



