56 CHEMICAL DISCOVERY AND INVENTION 



their studies are spread over three, four, or even five years before 

 they can receive their certificates or be admitted to degrees. In 

 these institutions, equally with Charlottenburg, the activities of 

 professors and students are not confined to teaching and learning, 

 the aim is to foster every kind of knowledge which can be turned 

 to practical account in manufactures and industries, and to 

 extend the boundaries of existing knowledge by research. The 

 importance of cultivating this spirit of enquiry into the unknown, 

 the study of new problems, the encouragement of invention, and 

 the exercise of the imagination are now being generally recognised 

 by governing bodies, and receive favour, perhaps not yet liberally 

 enough, from authorities generally. 



The technical high school at Charlottenburg is entirely in- 

 dependent of the University, appointing its own professors and 

 teachers, of whom there are about four hundred, arranging its 

 own curricula, and granting its own degrees. The object in view 

 is not education in the general sense, but the cultivation and 

 extension of all kinds of knowledge likely to be of service in 

 manufactures and commerce. 



The main building at Charlottenburg is 750 feet long by 

 300 feet deep, and four stories high. It was inaugurated in 

 November, 1884, by the Kaiser. The chemical laboratories 

 stand in a separate building to the east (Fig. 29, facing p. 60). 

 This building is 215 feet long by rather less than 200 feet deep. 

 It encloses two courts separated from each other by a building 

 which contains two of the principal lecture rooms. In the original 

 description it was stated to be the largest building of the kind 

 in the whole of Germany. 



IV. THE LABORATORY IN THE WORKS 



The business of a works laboratory is, naturally, not general, 

 but is concerned exclusively with the operations actually carried 

 on or prospective. Hence it is divisible under two distinct 

 heads, namely, routine testing or analysis merely for the purposes 

 of control, and, on the other hand, research with a view to im- 

 provements or developments. As to the routine work again this 

 relates generally to raw materials bought for manufacture, or 

 products of the factory for the market, or to the testing necessary 

 at several stages of a manufacturing process. Another kind of 

 work is that which has to be clone in order to comply with some 

 legal requirement, such as the Alkali Act, which applies to the 



