SECTION VI 

 METALLURGICAL RESEARCH AS A NATIONAL RESOURCE 



By H. W. Gillett 

 Chief Technical Adviser, Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, Ohio 



ABSTRACT 



Metals are necessary to every industry. Implements 

 for agriculture, machines and tools for manufacturing, 

 reaction vessels for chemistry, all the means of trans- 

 portation, trains, trucks and passenger cars, planes, 

 steamships, electric power lines, the telephone and tele- 

 graph, the printing press, household furnaces and stoves, 

 gas and water piping, electric lights, the tin cans on the 

 pantry shelf — indeed anything one cares to name — 

 relies directly or indirectly upon metals. 



The welfare of the ultimate consumer demands that 

 metals and alloys of suitable properties and reasonable 

 cost be supplied to meet present needs and, when differ- 

 ent properties or further reductions in cost are called for 

 to meet new needs or changing economic conditions, 

 that no stone be left unturned to fill the needs. 



The metal-producing and metal-using industries have 

 filled present needs and are preparing to meet new ones 

 through research, carried on from the urge of the profit 

 motive. Fruitful metallurgical research could be cited 

 that would fill many volumes. A few cases, selected as 

 representative, are mentioned in connection with aliuni- 

 num, copper, zinc, magnesium, corrosion-resistant steels, 

 high-speed and cemented-carbide tools, railway raUs, 

 continuous rolling of flat steel products, that have 

 brought benefits to the ultimate consumer, created em- 

 ployment, and provided fimds for the tax gatherers. 



It is characteristic of metal-producing industries that 

 quantity production is essential for economy. This 

 requires huge expenditures of capital for plant and 

 equipment. Large, strongly financed firms, in some 

 special cases even quasi monopoHes, are the rule. Such 

 firms take a long view ; they plan for their future exist- 

 ence. They consider it as necessary to insure a steady 

 flow of technological improvements in products and proc- 

 esses, and the development of entirely new products, as 

 it is to arrange for ample supplies of raw materials. 

 Hence well-manned and well-equipped research and 

 development groups axe an essential part of the corpo- 

 rate set-up in aU major metallurgical industries. Tlie 

 utilization of research lias not yet proceeded so far in 

 those industries as in the chemical industries, but the 

 rate of increase in metallurgical research has been rapid 

 in the last decade, and shows no signs of slowing up. 



The research laboratories of the metallurgical indus- 

 tries are operated on a teamwork basis and advances 

 are made nowadays on the basis of intensive work of a 

 group rather than by the sole effort of a lone investi- 

 gator. This trend extends beyond the confines of a 

 single firm, in that secrecy is at a minimum and free 

 exchange of information at a maximum. 



Several strong technical societies, other special 

 groups organized for interchange of information, and 

 the trade and technical metallurgical journals provide 

 means of disseminating and reaping information. To 

 this situation may be ascribed the fact that metallurgi- 

 cal research workers are recruited not only from students 

 of special metallurgical courses in the imiversities, but 

 equally from the ranks of physicists, chemists and engi- 

 neers who have a scientific foundation from their college 

 coiu-se and superimpose on this, by their own study of 

 the available metallurgical literature, the requisite 

 specific metallurgical information. 



Thus the wiU to carry on continuous research exists 

 m, and a supply of qualified personnel for research is 

 available to, the metallurgical industries. As apprecia- 

 tion spreads of the necessity for research, many com- 

 panies already engaged in research find special metal- 

 lurgical research problems cropping up that are outside 

 the range of experience of their own staff and for which 

 equipment is lacking in their own laboratories. Simi- 

 larly, firms, especially among users of metallurgical 

 products, not yet able to finance permanent research 

 staffs and equipment are faced with the problem of find- 

 ing means for the solution of the problems. If the 

 problem is common to a number of firms, they may pool 

 their interests and engage in joint research, often 

 through the instrumentality of a committee of a tech- 

 nical society. Such joint problems, as well as the in- 

 dividual problems of the single firms referred to above, 

 have to be farmed out to laboratories staffed and 

 equipped for metallurgical work. Such laboratories, 

 established as engineering experiment stations of uni- 

 versities and as specialized research institutes, are ex- 

 tensively utilized. Conditions, therefore, are favorable 

 for the continual flow of research required for the 

 metallurgical needs of the nation. 



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