340 



National Resources Planning Board 



ing, and chemical- and food-processing equipment." 



A rubber manufacturer maintains research groups 

 covering "The apphcation of rubber or rubber and steel 

 to the automotive trade," and "new uses for latex 

 products — examples: Cushions, thread, mattresses, 

 springs," and says "the plastic field is expanding so 

 fast that new uses are of almost daily development." 



A maker of power-plant equipment writes, "Con- 

 siderable time is devoted to furnishing consulting 

 services to our customers who encounter problems 

 with our products"; an oil company uses engineers in 

 the field to give "engineering advice to users of pe- 

 troleum products"; another uses mechanical engineei's 

 for "cooperating with designers, manufacturers, and 

 operators of all types of mechanical equipment in 

 connection with design problems, metallurgical prob- 

 lems, lubricating problems, corrosion problems, methods 

 of applying lubricants, filtering and reconditioning of 

 lubricants, as well as all phases of petroleum products 

 used in industry as an ingredient in the manufacture 

 of products for commerce — for instance, ink oils, rust 

 preventives, paper sizing, leather oils, wood preserva- 

 tives, rubber pigments, paint pigments, etc." 



In the sales field, a manufacturer of abrasives has a 

 sales-research engineer who investigates " sales-research- 

 engineering questions by frequent visits into the field 

 and into customers' plants"; a fabricator of iron and 

 steel engineering specialties says that its engineering 

 service department "was organized about eight years 

 ago for the dual purpose of training our sales engineers 

 and developing a fact-finding set-up concerning the 

 various fields of application for our products"; and an 

 oil company writes, " In our field work some two hundred 

 mechanical engineers are employed in direct selling, 

 whose duties are to cooperate with manufacturers of 

 mechanical equipment, etc., wherein petroleum prod- 

 ucts play a part. Any and all problems that arise 

 wherein the possibility of research and improvement 

 may show promise are cleared tlu^ough this office and 

 our laboratories." 



Finally a steel foundry writes that mechanical 

 engineers are in charge of some of its market surveys; 

 and an oil company uses "mechanical, chemical, and 

 petroleum engineers practically interchangeably" in 

 studying the "new equipment requirements of industry" 

 by means of the "survey and analysis of trends in 

 industry, such as advancement in metallurgy, new pro- 

 cesses in industry, changes in code requirements, etc." 



How much farther this customer-contact work will 

 develop in the future in the way of studying the broader, 

 long-range trends of industry, and how considerable a 

 part engineers, and particularly mechanical engineers, 

 working in management, will play in this development, 

 remains to be seen. This is probably one of the most 

 fruitful research opportunities for engineers. 



Fundamental Research 



The contributors to this report describe a considerable 

 extent and variety of fundamental research in their 

 organizations. By fundamental research is meant 

 accumulating the scientific data and formulating the 

 general principles underlying the design of one's 

 product as contrasted with studying particular applica- 

 tions of such data and principles. 



This is a somewhat broader definition than that of 

 one correspondent who thinks of fundamental research 

 "as a blanket investigation with the object of turning 

 up whatever hidden facts may lie in the unexplored 

 field," or, as Dr. Hirshfeld puts it, "scientific or pure 

 research with no immediate, practical goal in sight." 

 Fundamental research, even in this restricted sense, has 

 been found to pay by some companies, particidarly by 

 the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, and by 

 certain well-known electrical and commimi cation com- 

 panies. Dr. Hirshf eld's wise comment is: 



It is as )et too early to say that in all cases (industrial research) 

 may be extended profitably into what we generally refer to as 

 pure research. However, I am inclined to believe that this will 

 be recognized as a fact in the years to come. It seems to me that 

 the history of industrial research points inevitably in that 

 direction. 



For the purposes of this report, however, fundamental 

 research is taken to include not only "scientific or pure 

 research" in the sense indicated, but also a large amount 

 of collecting of data, of measuring the properties of 

 materials, and of studying general rather than particular 

 problems, such as surface finishes, corrosion, and heat- 

 transfer, that build up the stored information on which 

 later engineering development must depend. Of this 

 sort of fundamental research industry does a great deal. 



One phase of such activity is library research. Many 

 industrial concerns maintain their own technical li- 

 braries, and so called "special librarians" form a 

 recognized branch of the librarian's profession. Some 

 concerns have speciaUsts whose sole function is carrying 

 through literatiu"e searches on demand. Many formally 

 organize the routing of current technical magazines and 

 reports through their research and engineering de- 

 partments. 



Turning to fundamental researcli itself, an interest- 

 ing residt of analyzing the letters received is the emer- 

 gence of a considerable number of fimdamental problems 

 that are common to a variety of industries. It will be 

 possible to mention only a few of them. Thus fimda- 

 mental problems in stress analysis are being explored 

 by builders of dirigibles, railway signals, steam and 

 water turbines, firearms, pipe, shoe machinery, loco- 

 motives, railway cars, oil-pimaping machinery, tin-can- 

 making machineiy, and many others. Heat transfer is 

 reported to be the concern of boiler makers, refrigerator 

 manufacturers, insidation manufacturers, chemical con- 



