122 THE FIELD OF EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH. 



ister those finishing touches which often mark the difference between 

 success and failure. There must be in his mental equipment that clear 

 comprehension of the proper adjustment of means to ends which is of 

 such great value in work in new fields. He must also learn to render 

 available to science the resources of the larger workshops and indus- 

 trial establishments. 



The application of physical principles ^pon a large scale in such 

 works has frequently, in recent years, resulted in great gains to 

 science itself. The resources of the phA'sical laboratory are often 

 relatively small and meager compared with those of the factory. 

 Experimental work in certain lines is now frequently carried on upon 

 a scale so great and under such varied conditions as would be almost 

 impossible outside of a large works. 



In no field has this been more true than in that of electricity' during 

 the past few years. V^'e need only instance the progress in alternating 

 currents and in relation to the magnetic properties of iron. In large 

 scale operations ofi'ects which would l)e missed or remain masked in 

 work undertaken upon a more restricted scale receive emphasis sui- 

 ficient to cause them to command attention. The obstacle of increas- 

 ing costliness of equipment, which in some fields might act as a l)ar to 

 further progress, can only be overcome by more liberal endowments 

 of laboratories engaged in advance work. Even those in the com- 

 munity who can only understand the value of scientific work when it 

 has been put to practical use may find in the history of past progress 

 that many discoveries in pure science which had not, when made, any 

 apparent commercial importance or value have in the end resulted in 

 great practical revolutions. 



Could Voita. when he discovered the pile one hundred years ago, 

 have had any idea of its importance in practical work? Or, did Davy 

 or his contemporaries at the time of his experiments with the arc 

 of flame between the charcoal terminals of his large battery have any 

 suspicion that in less than one hundred years the electric arc would 

 grow to such importance that more than 100,000 arc lamps would 

 become a single year's production in this country alone? Fara- 

 day, when he made his researches upon the induction of electric 

 currents from magnetism, could not have had any idea of the enor- 

 mous practical work in which the principles he dealt with as facts of 

 pure science would find embodiment. When he wound upon the 

 closed iron ring the two coils of wire which enabled him to discover 

 the facts of mutual induction, he had begun, without an}^ suspicion of 

 the fact, the experimental work which gave to science and to practice 

 the modern transformer, now built of capacities ranging up to 2,500 

 horsepower each, and for potentials of 4:0,000 to 60,000 volts. 



These examples, and many others which might be given, should con- 

 vince even the most arrogantly practical man of the high value cf 



