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National Resources Planning Board 



has taken place in the past decade; the airplane pilot 

 no longer flies "by the seat of his pants," but with the 

 aid of an imposing array of instruments. This change 

 is paralleled in the research laboratory. The analogy 

 is recognized in that the cockpit of today's plane is 

 often termed a "flying laboratory." Research on 

 new or more precise instruments and more dependable 

 metallurgical tools is as necessary as is the research that 

 uses them. 



The Pyrometer 



Although the metallurgist now assumes that precise 

 measurement and control of temperature are axiomatic 

 in any metallurgical process involving heating, this was 

 not always so. The development of the thermocouple 

 and of other means for measurement of temperatures 

 was basic for all later developments in metallurgical 

 science and technology. 



The Induction Furnace 



The development of the high-frequency induction 

 furnace by Northrup, useful as it has proved to be 

 commercially, was an especial boon to metallurgical 

 research, for it increased the speed and precision with 

 which melts of desired composition could be made. 

 Incidentally Northrup was a professor when he began to 

 work on his idea, but the commercial sponsorship and 

 financial backing of the Ajax Electro thermic Corpora- 

 tion with its hope of private gain, were essential to the 

 embodiment of the idea in tangible, useful form. 



New Arms, New Conquests 



As fast as we can free ourselves from the shackles of 

 old modes of thinking and devise and utilize new 

 instruments and more powerful tools, we can tackle 

 problems that were hitherto unsolvable. 



New facts and new principles remain to be unearthed 

 and new applications of old ones remain to be made. 

 The residts should be as potent in serving human needs, 

 developing industries and bringing employment, and 

 wiping out dependence on strategic materials derived 

 from abroad as those unearthed in the past have been. 



Provision for the Future 



If we admit this, and if we admit that metallurgy 

 underlies all industry, we are ready to ask what pro- 

 vision is being made for continuation and expansion of 

 metallurgical research. 



Whence Will Come the Fundamental 

 Metallurgical Research of the Future? 



It is often stated that the universities are the fountain 

 heads of "pure" or "fundamental" research from which 

 flow the ideas on which the applied research of future 

 generations will be based. This is hardly accurate in 



metaUurgy. Even the initial, crude developments are 

 likely to require expensive special equipment for the 

 purchase of whicli university funds are seldom avail- 

 able. Smoothing out the crudities requires years of 

 continuous effort, a time extending beyond that of a 

 graduate course, so that the professor must work 

 through a succession of students, each new one lacking 

 the background of the previous ones. 



With a commercial urge and the prospect of gain to 

 be derived from utilizing information as soon as it is 

 found, a well-financed industrial research group is far 

 more likely to delve widely and deeply than a uni- 

 versity can. With the incentive of commercial need, 

 the research laboratories of the General Electric 

 Company " sought ductile tungsten for the electric light 

 more doggedly and at far greater expense than could 

 have been the case in academic circles. A greater 

 amount of theoretical work in metallurgy that might 

 appear to be of highly abstruse nature, but which was 

 required to forge a needed link in a commercial research 

 chain, is encountered in the Bell Laboratories and the 

 research laboratories of the Westinghouse and General 

 Electric companies, than in the universities. Within 

 the limitations of permissible cost of equipment, the 

 Metals Research Laboratory of Carnegie Institute of 

 Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 

 and a few other schools, are working on fimdamental 

 metallurgical research problems with new information 

 as much an objective as the training of men. Battelle 

 Memorial Institute is doing the same sort of thing in 

 several lines, notably in cast iron, on its own endow- 

 ment. But, by and large, the bulk of the fundamental 

 work is carried on at the direct expense of industry, as 

 is the case with the work on rate of transformation of 

 steel at moderate and low temperatures, at the Research 

 Laboratory of the United States Steel Corporation. 



Universities today are looked to more for the raw 

 material from which research men are made than for a 

 completely finished product, or for research results in 

 themselves. 



The Supply of Future Workers 



Supplying such raw material is as essential as is the 

 provision of instruments and equipment for research. 

 One is of no more value without the other than is a 

 plane without a pilot or a pilot without a plane. Unless 

 the supply of research workers in metaUurgy is main- 

 tained and augmented, a dearth of good men is immi- 

 nent as soon as the metallurgical industries become as 

 research-minded as the chemical industries are today. 



Expert opinion '^ states that of all professions research 

 is the most short-handed, there being a smaller reservoir 

 of competent men compared to the need for them that 



" Hoyt, S. L. Ductile tungsten. Metals and Alloys, 6, n (1935). 

 '> Job hunters. Time, p. 34 (December 25, 1939). 



