408 PHYSICO-TECHNICAL INSTITUTION IN CHAKLOTTENBURG. 



advantages likeh^ to accrue to Germany from the maintenance of an 

 imperial institution for research, which should at the same time assume 

 the cognate function of fixing and certifying standards of mechanical 

 and physical measurements. Attention was drawn to the fact that 

 other countries, nota})ly England, had enjoyed great renown in science 

 because of the brilliant researches and discoveries of some of her scien- 

 tific men who had the good fortune to be possessed of leisure and 

 large private means and the scientific spirit to devote them to investi- 

 gations demanding both as a sine qua non. 



These conditions the memorialists declared were lacking in the father- 

 land. Her scholars who had the enthusiasm and the capacity for exact 

 scientific investigation possessed neither the private fortune to devote 

 to it nor the uninterrupted time for the execution of the work. They 

 were to be found among the men engaged in teaching, but their pro- 

 fessional duties absorbed their time to such an extent that only an 

 inade(|uate residue remained; and even that little was divided into 

 fractions too small to admit of the sustained and continuous attention 

 which an}" important investigation demands. 



Tt was further pointed out that if the Government would supply the 

 conditions favorable to scientific discovery, the men could ])0 found 

 whose work would reflect great credit on the State, while the interac- 

 tion b(>tween pure science and its applications to arts and mamifactures 

 would put (Tcrmany in the forefront of scientific renown and of the 

 intelligent application of science to useful purposes. 



It was further urged l)y von Helmholtz that the ])rilliant investigations 

 of Kegnault and other French phj'sicists many years ago should now 

 be repeated with the superior methods and instrumental appliances 

 available at the present time. These investigations drew the attention 

 of the scientific world to France and made it the focus of scientific 

 interest. Her instrument makers, even up to the present, have reaped 

 a rich reward in foreign orders for instruments made eminently 

 desirable and almost indispensable by these distinguished French 

 investigators. 



Other problems, too. needed solution — problems forced to the front 

 by modern requirements and discoveries. The applications of elec- 

 tricity, for example, present new questions for science to answer, while 

 the interests of the consumer at the same time call for some form of 

 control by the State of the instruments employed in fulfilling con- 

 tracts. The very units in which such measurements are made need to 

 be authoritatively settled — a task demanding the highest manipulative 

 skill in experiment and the most refined appliances which experience 

 can suggest and money purchase. 



The German Government admitted the force of these considerations 

 and made splendid provision, both for pure science and its technical 



