SECTION II 

 1. THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH 



IN THE UNITED STATES 



By Howard R. Bartlett 

 Head, Department of English and History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. 



ABSTRACT 



In the nineteenth century the activity of scientists 

 in Europe and the United States greatly increased man's 

 fundamental knowledge. Laymen in this country, 

 convinced of the importance of the newly discovered 

 facts, made it financially possible to establish schools 

 of science and technology, whose avowed object was to 

 instruct students in the application of science to the 

 everyday purposes of life. 



Certain factors, however, served to delay the prog- 

 ress of applied science in this country. Its territory 

 was so vast and its resources were so abundant that 

 industry, for some time, was not particularly concerned 

 with producing goods economically and efficiently. 

 As long as the products of industry could be sold at a 

 profitable price to a rapidly increasing population, the 

 manufacturer had httle incentive to invest his funds 

 in the search for new methods or new products. It was 

 not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century 

 that competition became sufficiently severe to cause 

 industrialists to turn with increasing frequency to 

 professors in the universities and to commercial chem- 

 ists for assistance. The results were so satisfactory 

 that the gap between" pure" and applied science grad- 

 ually closed, and trained chemists, physicists, metal- 

 lurgists, and biologists found employment in industry. 

 Also during this period, independent investigators, 

 working in their own laboratories, made discoveries 

 which resulted in the foundation of new industries and 

 demonstrated further the advantages to be gained from 



utilizing in industry the facts and methods of science. 



Until the twentieth century, however, industrial 

 research remained largely a matter of the unorganized 

 effort of individuals. Early in the 1900's a few com- 

 panies organized separate research departments and 

 began a systematic search not only for the solutions to 

 immediate problems of development and production, 

 but also for new knowledge that would point the way 

 for the future. 



The First World War focused the attention of the 

 general pubHc upon the accomplishments of applied 

 science and greatly stimulated the growth of industrial 

 research. Between 1920 and 1940 the number of m- 

 dustrial research laboratories increased from about 300 

 to more than 2,200. 



Great changes have been wrought by the results of 

 industrial research. More efficient and economical 

 methods have conserved our resources; new materials 

 have made possible better products; and new products 

 have contributed to the health, pleasure, and comfort 

 of the general public. Such changes have not taken 

 place without some temporary misfortunes. Here and 

 there industries have disappeared and people have 

 been temporarily thrown out of work, but the net result 

 of 40 years of organized industrial research in this 

 country has been the enrichment of life to an incalcu- 

 lable degree. 



The last section of this paper presents historical 

 sketches of more than 50 industrial research laboratories. 



Factors Affecting the Development 

 of Industrial Research 



The nineteenth century was nearly over before the 

 industrial research laboratory became an important 

 factor in the economic life of the United States. Not 

 until the nineties had the developments in science, 

 education, and industry reached the point at which 

 the organized application of science to industry by 

 trained men seemed to industrialists to be the key to 

 greater progress and profit. Without a fund of scicn- 



321835—41 3 



tific knowledge from which to draw and without a sup- 

 ply of men sufficiently prepared to apply that knowledge, 

 the industrial research laboratory could not e.xist. By 

 the end of the nineteenth century both of these require- 

 ments had been met, and in addition industry had come 

 to realize, from the accomplishments of the works chem- 

 ist and the individual experimenter, that many of the 

 problems which defied rule-of-thumb methods would 

 yield to the application of science. Toda}' the research 

 laboratory is widely recognized as an indispensable 



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