4 ANNUAL REPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



RESEARCH CORPORATION. 



The Research Corporation has recently been organized under the laws of the 

 State of New York as a self-supporting means of furthering scientific and tech- 

 nical research. The corporation has two objects : First, to acquire inventions 

 and patents and to make them more available in the arts and industries, while 

 using them as a source of income; and, second, to apply all profits derived from 

 such use to the advancement of technical and scientific investigation and ex- 

 perimentation through the agency of the Smithsonian Institution and such 

 other scientific and educational institutions and societies as may be selected 

 by the directors. For these purposes the corporation has been capitalized at 

 $20,000, divided into 200 shares, but the charter provides that no dividends shall 

 be paid and that the entii'e net profits shall be devoted to research ; all the stock 

 being held under a stockholders' agreement, which recites that the corporation 

 has been organized for the purpose of aiding and encouraging technical and 

 scientific research, and not for personal or individual profit. 



At the present time many discoveries are constantly being made, which un- 

 doubtedly possess a greater or less potential value, but which are literally being 

 allowed to go to waste for lack of thorough development. This is due, in some 

 cases, to the fact that the inventors are men in the service of the Government, 

 or in the universities or technical schools, who are retarded either by otSclal 

 positions, lack of means, or reluctance to engage in commercial enterprises ; and 

 in other cases to the fact that a discovery made incidentally in the laboratory 

 of a manufacturing corporation does not lend itself to the particuar purpose 

 of such corporation. True conservation demands that such by-producls as 

 these shall be developed and utilized to the fullest extent of which they are 

 capable. The Research Corporation aims to supply this demand; and, through 

 the cooperation of the Smithsonian Institution and the universities, to carry 

 forward the work of investigation already begun by others upon lines which 

 promise important results and to perfect such inventions as may prove to 

 possess commercial value, thus bringing scientific institutions into closer rela- 

 tions with industrial activities and furthering the improvements of industrial 

 processes. 



The establishment of the Research Corporation has been rendered immediately 

 possible by the acquisition, through the gift of Dr. F. G. Cottrell, of the United 

 States Bureau of Mines, and his associates, of a valuable set of patents relating 

 to the precipitation of dust, smoke, and chemical fumes by the use of electrical 

 currents. These devices have already been tested and are in operation in sev- 

 eral Western States, and are fully described in an article in *' Industrial and 

 Engineering Chemistry ", for August, 1911. The ownership of these patents 

 and the exclusive control of them, except in six Western States, at once assures 

 a certain amount of business to the corporation, and it already has contracts 

 for preliminary installations in the Garfield Smelter of the American Smelter 

 & Refining Co., the New York Edison Co., and the Baltimore Copper Refinery. 

 Numerous inquiries have been received fx'om other important plants. 



Besides the patents which have already been transferred to the corporation, a 

 number of others in various fields of industry have been offered by officers of 

 the Government and scientific institutions, as well as by manufacturing cor- 

 porations holding patents not available for their own purposes. A similar offer 

 has also come from Germany, through Mr. Erwin Moller, who has developed 

 certain inventions in the same field as the Cottrell patents, and undoubtedly 

 there are many others who will be glad to have their inventions utilized for the 

 benefit of scientific research. 



