THE AIMS OF THE NATIONAL PHYSICAL LABORATORY 

 OF (IRE AT BRITAIN.* 



By R. T. Glazebrook, F. R. S., 



Director of the National Physical Laboratory.* 



A speaker who is privileged to deliver an experimental lecture from 

 this place is usually able to announce some brilliant discovery of his 

 own, or at least to illustrate his words by some striking experiment. 

 To-night it is not in my power to do this, and I am thereby at a dis- 

 advantage. Still, I value highly this opportunity which has been 

 given me of making known to this audience the aims and purpose of 

 the National Laboratory. 



The idea of a physical laboratory in which problems bearing at once 

 on science and industry might be solved is comparatively new. The 

 Physikalisch-technische Reichsanstalt, founded in Berlin by the joint 

 labors of Werner von Siemens and von Helmholtz during the 3 r ears 

 1883-1887, was, perhaps, the first. It is less than ten years since Dr. 

 Lodge, in his address to Section A of the British association, outlined 

 the scheme of work for such an institution here in England. 



Nothing came of this. A committee met and discussed plans, but it 

 was felt to be hopeless to approach the Government, and without 

 Government aid there were no funds. Four years later, however, the 

 late Sir Douglas Galton took the matter up. In his address to the 

 British association in 1895, and again in a paper read before Section A, 

 he called attention to the work done for Germany by the Reichsanstalt, 

 and to the crying need for a similar institution in England. The result 

 of this presidential pronouncement was the formation of a committee 

 which reported at Liverpool, giving a rough outline of a possible 

 scheme of organization. 



a Reprinted, by permission, from Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LX, December, 

 1901. 



"A discourse delivered at the Royal Institution. See also article by Henry S. 

 Carhart in the Smithsonian Report for 1900 giving a description of the Physikalisch- 

 technische Reichsanstalt with several illustrations omitted from the present paper. — 

 Editor. 



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