APPLIED SCIENCE AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH 203 



two statements together may be taken as representing the 

 ideals to^^vard which every industrial research laboratory 

 should strive. 



In the early days of industrial research, a business assigned 

 to it only a very small part of the executive budget. Confi- 

 dence in the attainment of valuable results was small. If the 

 use of science in the business succeeded, it was regarded as a 

 kind of windfall. The success of the business depended, as 

 in the past, upon the efficiency of production and selling. 

 Businesses, at any rate all except the very largest, tend to be 

 dominated by one of the gi^eat functional departments, such 

 as that concerned with selling, in which case production is 

 attuned to the needs of the sales department. In others, the 

 more actixe and aggressive groups are those engaged in pro- 

 duction, and these companies sell what they produce rather 

 than produce what they need to sell. But with the gi'owth 

 of industrial research, the development and introduction of 

 new products have become of such great importance that 

 there are companies in which quite avoAvedly the research 

 and development departments represent the primary driving 

 force; the production departments manufacture the new 

 products and the sales department sells them. In many com- 

 panies the economic value of the research work is now fully 

 recognized, and the financial journals devote a considerable 

 amount of space to the development of industrial science. 



The number and size of the industrial research laboratories 

 have increased rapidly during the last thirty years. In the 

 excellent monograph issued by the National Resources Plan- 

 ning Board, it is stated that since the first World W^ar, indus- 

 trial research in the United States has assumed the propor- 

 tions of a major industry.* In 1920, about three hundred 

 laboratories xvere engaged in industrial research. In 1940, 

 the number had increased to more than 2200. The total 

 personnel had groxvn from approximately 9000 to over 



* Report of the National Research Council to the National Resources 

 Planning Board, p. 37, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 

 D. C, 1941. 



