Industrial Research 



177 



ncers in industrial research indicates unusual opportuni- 

 ties in these fiehls or whether it represents a compara- 

 tively large supply of trained workere from which men 

 are drawn for jobs not strictly in line with their training. 

 It is perhaps worth noting that the total number of 

 professionally trained pei-sonncl is in excess of the 

 number of other technical and nontechnical people 

 engaged in research.' Whether or not this represents 

 the actual situation may be open to some question, but 

 it does suggest that the data used for this study relate 

 rather closely to a high grade of technical work, and 

 that the research emplojTnent data have not been over- 

 loaded with nonresearch personnel. 



Establishment of Research 



If one turns from the personnel engaged in research 

 to a consideration of the number of laboratory units 

 involved, the data show that some 2,350 companies 

 have reported a total of 3,4S0 laboratories.'" A number 

 of these companies are subsidiaries of other corporations 



' The distribution between professional and nonprofessional personnel as shown 

 in table 1 dISers from tha,t reported in Industrial Research and Changing Technology. 

 See footnote 1. The difference is due principally to inclusion in the 1940 survey 

 of classifications of research workers not included previously. See footnote 3. 



and, grouping these, there are 2,210 corporate units " 

 which consider research to be a recognized policy of 

 the management. 



The history of industrial research in the United 

 States is, in large part, the history of the establislmient 

 of research by these managements. This is shown in 

 figure 40 as the number '^ of corporate imits which intro- 

 duced research as a recognized function in each year 

 since 1890. It is obvious that the character of research 

 has varied consid(>rably since the early laboratories 

 were established. This should not obscure the fact 

 that, well before 1900, a certain nimiber of industrialists 

 had concluded that organized technical fact-finding 

 was a desirable activity for their organizations. Nvi- 

 merous cases have been reported where the original 



<' In this connection, "laboratory" is interpreted as the physical unit in which re- 

 search work is done. Major divisions of the research activities of a large company 

 have been counted as separate laboratories. It should be noted that the distinction 

 between "company" and "division" is frequently merely a formal one. For the 

 above reasons, the data jiiven for numbers of companies and laboratories should not 

 be interpreted ton literally. 



'1 I. e.. The parent company together with all subsidiaries. 



I* Testing and consulting laboratories and trade association laboratories have not 

 been included in figure 46. With this omission, the total number of corporate units 

 reported is 1,789. Of these, figure 46 includes 1,338. The sample appears adequate 

 to Indicate trends. 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF INDUSTRIAL 

 RESEARCH LABORATORIES 



EfiC-" D0~ c = s = :5e.jTS ONE LABQPATOP' 



Figure 47. — Geographical Distribution of Industrial Research Laboratories: 1940 



