124 Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute 



make the Bureau of Standards a clearing house of information — to use 

 the British term — on those subjects for the government. There are great 

 possibilities here for realizing economies in purchases and improvements 

 in design and there will also result inevitably a considerable impetus to 

 scientific research, especially on fundamental constants and properties 

 of materials which form the basis of constructing standards and writing 

 specifications. The formation of the American Engineering Standards 

 Committee, in which the Departments of Commerce, Navy, and War 

 are represented and which is now working in a highly satisfactory manner, 

 forms a further liaison with the public through the Engineering Societies, 

 which again makes for development and improvement in many domains 

 tributary to scientific research. 



In looking over the multiplicity of research projects supported by the 

 United States Government, one might easily get the impression that 

 with such a widely scattered responsibility, as actually exists, for the 

 planning of research in the various government departments, there 

 might arise considerable confusion and duplication. A careful survey 

 of the situation, however, would soon convince one of the surprisingly 

 slight amount of overlapping in the scientific work among the several 

 departments. I can speak with some positiveness on this subject as I 

 have been recently occupied in such a survey as a member of a Board 

 which has just completed a study of duplication in the scientific work 

 carried on by the government; and it is a fact that the actual duplication 

 is almost non-existent. 



Although there are in the United States for certain lines of govern- 

 mental scientific research, such formal or informal advisory technical 

 committees as mentioned above, the role of initiation, correlation and 

 stimulation of research, including industrial scientific research, taken in 

 England by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, has 

 been, in the United States largely assumed within the past year or two 

 by the National Research Council, the organization and scope of which 

 have been so ably set forth before' this Institute by its first Chairman, 

 Dr. Hale. 



The impetus given in England by the Government to the organiza- 

 tion and support of Research Associations has been, it seems to m.e, one 

 of the most remarkable of recent achievements in the successful inter- 

 vention by a government for the encouragement of national industries 

 by aiding in the formation of a type of organization by which the in- 

 dustries can best help themselves. The crucial test of this method of 

 stimulating industrial research will in all probability come after the five 

 years time limit of government support is reached when the Research 

 Associations will have to shift for themselves. 



