Industrial Research 



41 



benefits which come with the rcHef of eyestrain and the 

 prevention of nervous disorders. 



Recently the research laboratory of a steel mill 

 announced an electronic device that would substitute 

 for the fallible human eye an electric eye for controlling 

 the temperature in the process of making Bessemer 

 steel. It is claimed that the accuracy made possible by 

 this one result of a research project costing less than 

 $75,000 will save the company $3 on every ton of steel 

 it produces, or a potential yearly sum of $3,000,000. 



Every automobile owner has shared directly in the 

 results of the intensive research carried on by the 

 manufacturers of tires. In 1908 a small tire cost $25; a 

 large one $125. Each dollar bought about 50 miles of 

 tire travel. In 1920 the estimated cost of tires for every 

 10,000 miles traveled was $163. By 1936 this figure 

 has been reduced to $38.30. Dr. W. A. Gibbons, of the 

 United States Rubber Company, has figured that if one 

 assumes that this reduction in the price of tires since 

 1920 has not been a determining factor in bringing about 

 the increased use of automobiles then the decrease in 

 cost that has taken place has saved the public the 

 enormous total of $35,083,000,000. 



Impressive as are the new methods of industry, more 

 impressive still are the new products which have been 

 made possible through industrial research. In 1935 

 the American Chemical Society exhibited at the 

 Exposition of Chemical Industries 75 industrial prod- 

 ucts that had been commercialized during the recovery 

 period 1934-35. No product was exhibited whose 

 origin could not be traced directly to an industrial 

 research laboratory. Every person's life is influenced 

 by direct contact with scores of new devices and 

 products that did not exist 10 years ago, but far greater 

 in number are the new materials used by industry, of 

 which the layman knows little. 



In 1911, W. R. Wliitney wrote: 



Copper, iron, and five other metals were known and used at 

 the time of Christ. In the first 1,800 or 1,900 years of our era, 

 there were added to the list of metals in technical use (pure or 

 alloyed) about eight more, or a rate below three a century. 

 There has been so much industrial advance made within the past 

 twenty or thirty years that fourteen new metals have been 

 brought into commercial use within this period. This is almost 

 as many in our quarter century as in the total preceding age of 

 the world." 



Just a quarter of a century later C. M. A. Stine, 

 speaking in 1936 at the annual dinner of the Wilmington 

 Traffic Club, said : 



Lighter, stronger, rust-resisting metals were needed. The 

 metallurgist and the electrochemist have developed more than 

 10,000 alloys that have gone into every department of industry. 

 It was chiefly the demands of the automobile and the airplane 

 that inspired this research, which in turn revolutionized steel- 

 making and all metal working . . ." 



'I Research as a financial asset, p. 346. Sec footnote 60. 



n Stine. C. M. A. Change rules the rails. Vilal Speech^, f. 348 (March 9. 1936) 



In any list of now jiroducts must be included multi- 

 farious chemicals, medicines, drugs, vaccines, and 

 serums. If the byproducts of the wood, coal, and 

 petroleum iiulustries were also added, the total would 

 be stupendous. By decreasing costs and improving 

 quality, by relieving drudgery and sulforing, and by 

 increasing the opportunities for pleasure these new 

 products have contributed to a higher standard of 

 living. 



The impact of new methods and new materials upon 

 industry has brought, however, continual change; and 

 change in a complicated industrial society inevitably 

 means insecurity, temporary dislocation, and frequently 

 disaster for many individuals. The rapidity with 

 which this change sometimes occurs is well illustrated 

 by the following description of events that took place 

 as the tungsten lamp was being evolved. 



I have seen whole factories entirely overhauled a number of 

 times in the past few years, in order to make the newest lamps. 

 Not only have entire floors of complicated and expensive 

 machines for making carbon lamps been thrown out and new 

 machinery for making metal filament lamps installed, but before 

 packing cases containing new machines could be opened and 

 unpacked in the factory they have been thrown out as uselees, 

 as the advance from squirted metal filaments to drawn wire 

 filaments proved the better way. Before the limit of factory 

 efficiency on vacuum lamps could be reached, the introduction 

 of nitrogen into the lamps brought the factories an entirely new 

 factor, and now, before the consumers have more than com- 

 menced to feel the effects of the nitrogen-tungsten lamps, the 

 manufacture of argon and its introduction into the incandescent 

 lamp becomes a reality.'' 



Rarely can the shocks caused by technical changes 

 be absorbed within a single company. The rapid 

 development of the incandescent lamp, for example, 

 eliminated any commercial possibilities for an ingenious 

 lamp invented by Nernst and also greatly lessened the 

 value of certain German patents covering a process for 

 producing ductile tungsten. Hall's electrolytic process 

 for producing akmiinum at $1 a pound brought sudden 

 idleness to Castner's plant which had been producing 

 500 pounds a day at a cost of $4 a pound. Likewise 

 the development of mechanical refrigeration has made 

 great inroads upon the market for natural ice. The 

 successful production of synthetic indigo meant that 

 the market for the crop from 1,000,000 acres of land in 

 India had been destroyed. The discovery of an eco- 

 nomical process for the fixation of nitrogen has freed 

 the world from its dependence upon the nitrate beds 

 of Chile, with the residt that an important Chilean 

 industry has s unk steadily into debt, and the country 

 has lost a major source of revenue. Successful proc- 

 esses for the production of synthetic fibers and sj'n- 

 thetic rubber have created new domestic industries and 



» Whitney, W. R. Relation of research to the progress of manolacttirlng indus- 

 tries. General Eleclrk Review, 18, 872 (September 1915). 



