408 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1949 
material matters and in good will could be anticipated, beneficial 
alike to the countries concerned and to the United States. 
The purposeful employment of science and technology to aid in 
economic reconstruction following a period of disaster is no new thing. 
Louis XV established the first significant school for civilian education 
in engineering as part of a program prudently directed to restoring 
French economy from the depression brought on by the extrava- 
gances of Louis XIV. In similar fashion, the great Ecole Polytech- 
nique was established in Paris in 1795 as part of the government’s 
program of scientific and technical education designed to repair the 
economic ravages of the French Revolution. For a century, at 
least, L’Ecole Polytechnique was the world’s outstanding center of 
pure and applied science, and profoundly influenced French social 
and economic progress. 
In Germany, where the statesmen had a peculiar appreciation for 
the practical values of technological education, this type of school 
was established in part as a recovery program from the economic 
chaos brought on by the Napoleonic Wars, and in part as an aid in 
competing with Great Britain in industry and trade. The famous 
technical schools in Germany became the very foundation stone of 
its industrial progress. Of them Whitehead has said: 
. . . the Germans explicitly realised the methods by which the deeper veins 
in the mine of science could be reached. They abolished haphazard methods of 
scholarship. In their technological schools and universities progress did not have 
to wait for the occasional genius or the occasional lucky thought. Their feats of 
scholarship during the nineteenth century were the admiration of the world. 
This discipline of knowledge applies beyond technology to pure science, and 
beyond science to general scholarship. It represents the change from amateurs 
to professionals .. . 
Closer to our own day, we have the admirable example of the 
British, who, following World War I, established the million-pound 
research fund for stimulating renewed industrial activity. This 
marked the beginning of a great program of scientific research under 
private management but with governmental support which, in the 
results of fundamental research and creative invention, has been 
claimed to exceed that of the United States, at least on a per capita 
basis. 
It follows, then, that one important task confronting science and 
technology today is to assist in rescuing world-wide economy from the 
set-back suffered during World War II. This applies not only to the 
other war-devastated countries, but also to our own country where 
also the war seriously diminished the normal supply rate of new 
scientists and engineers and of new scientific discovery into those 
stockpiles of trained technologists and new ideas which should be our 
most important future asset. 
