INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE LOOKS AHEAD: 
By BRIGADIER GENERAL DAvID SARNOFF 
President, Radio Corporation of America 
Industrial science at war is shaping a new world. While the bat- 
tle lines of the United Nations encircle the Fortress Europe and the 
gigantic pincers of victory tighten on the enemy in the Pacific, civi- 
lization advances ever closer to the postwar horizon. With victory 
will come the day when the scientific instruments and processes of 
war will turn abruptly to peace. Machines and tools, as well as 
industrial and economic thinking, will be converted quickly from the 
demands of war to the needs of peace. Industry will be called upon 
to relieve the strains of war with utmost speed by ministering anew 
to human welfare, health, and comfort. Postwar planners are now 
at work in many fields of industrial endeavor. 
It is not new for American industry to be surveying and planning 
for the future. That process is always at work here, whether the 
world is at peace or at war. Only by advanced thinking, research, 
engineering, and continual pioneering, can industrial science put 
new ideas into action. By doing this, industry serves its workers 
and the people, and thereby wins the right to survive. 
We have but to consider some of the outstanding wartime develop- 
ments of industrial science to realize their widespread applications 
in all fields, from automobiles to giant turbines and diesel engines, 
from cameras to facsimile and television. Endlessly these advances 
extend into every realm of our daily lives. Among the promises of 
better living we are told of new plastics, light metals, synthetic tex- 
tiles, high-octane gasoline, artificial rubber, luminescent lighting, air- 
conditioning, dehydration of foodstuffs, and many other innovations. 
We even hear of glass flatirons and plastic lenses. We are promised 
revolutionary changes in homes, aircraft, communications, ships, 
railroads, automobiles, highways, clothing, and foods. In myriad 
ways the wartime inventions in electricity, metallurgy, chemistry, and 
physics will open new gateways for industrial science to enter and 
enrich our everyday life. 
1 Address delivered before the Lancaster Chapter of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science. Reprinted by permission from Science, vol. 98, Nov. 19, 1948. 
183 
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