368 



National Resources Planning Board 



land, Germany, and France. These were organized to 

 give industrial and financial executives an opportunity 

 to see how certain successful industrial research labora- 

 tories have been set up, what their work consists of, 

 and how this scientific work has been built into the 

 organization of these companies. The division has had 

 numerous advisory contacts also with many industries 

 and individual corporations during the past 20 years. 



In other parts of the National Research Council, also, 

 relationships with industry have been developed and, 

 through the Council, industry has itself contributed in 

 important ways to the general progress of science in 

 this country. Most notable perhaps of these contribu- 

 tions from industry was support (totalling over $84,000) 

 given by a large number (about 180) of industrial con- 

 cerns to the pubHcation of the International Critical 

 Tables of Numerical Data, Physics, Chemistry, and 

 Technology, issued by the Council during the period 

 from 1926 to 1933; and the subsequent contribution by 

 many corporations to the Annual Tables of Constants 

 and Numerical Data of Chemistry, Physics, Biology, 

 and Technology, published in Paris. 



Groups of firms in various industries have from time 

 to time made use of facilities offered by the Council for 

 coordinating research effort upon scientific or technical 

 problems arising in those industries. Large contribu- 

 tions in funds, in services, and in apparatus have been 

 made by industrial firms to the Council for the support 

 of such projects. In engineering these have included, 

 for example, investigations upon electrical-core losses, 

 heat transmission, the preservation of marine piling, 

 fatigue phenomena of metals, industrial lighting, and 

 highway construction and management. Industry has 

 contributed, also, to research undertakings sponsored 

 by other divisions of the Council, such as studies 

 of pyrometry, colloids, catalysis, ring systems in chem- 

 istry, chemical economics, petroleum geology, the chem- 

 istry and pharmacology of narcotic drugs, food and 

 nutrition, reforestation and germination, agricultural 

 uses of sulfur, the standardization of biological stains, 

 diseases of Cuban sugarcane, and problems of person- 

 nel in industry. The auspices of the Council have been 

 utilized for a number of years to hold a series of con- 

 ferences on electrical insulation and for other confer- 

 ences in which industrialists have frequently joined 

 with academic scientific men. Industry has also con- 

 tributed through the Council to the support of research 

 undertakings bearing less directly upon industrial 

 problems, as for instance, an extended program of re- 

 search upon the biological effects of radiation. Certain 

 other projects of the Council have contributed more or 

 less directly to the support of industrial science, such 

 as the publication of an Annual Survey of American 

 Chemistry over a period of some 10 years. The Comi- 

 cil has also administered considerable funds supplied by 



industrial corporations for investigations carried on by 

 the National Bureau of Standards as a part of the co- 

 operative program of the Bureau for service to industry. 

 Of the post-doctorate fellows appointed by the Council 

 during the past 20 years in the fields of chemistry and 

 physics, over one-sixth (89) are now engaged in indus- 

 trial work and several past fellows of the Council in 

 medicine or in the biological sciences are connected with 

 industrial operations. 



During recent years it has seemed on the whole that 

 the attitude of industry toward research has changed. 

 The value to industry of progressive and often exceed- 

 ingly broad and fundamental research has come to be 

 more and more generally recognized. Financing con- 

 cerns ai'e paying attention to the research policies of 

 the corporations to which they lend aid. Attention has 

 accordingly shifted from the question of undertaking 

 any research program at all to the conditions under 

 which research, set up as an accepted part of the in- 

 dustrial establishment, may guide industrial develop- 

 ment with increasing efficiency and profit. 



Division of Engineering and Industrial Research 



Taking advantage of this turn of interest it was 

 possible for the Council's Division of Engineering and 

 Industrial Research two years ago to organize an Indus- 

 trial Research Institute, composed of member firms 

 which contribute funds for the support of the work of 

 the Institute. The objective of this organization is to 

 provide a forum for the study and discussion of prob- 

 lems of common interest affecting the utilization of 

 science for industrial purposes. These problems in- 

 clude such matters as sources and training for scientific 

 personnel, job analysis in the laboratory, relations of 

 the laboratory to the production and sales departments 

 in different types of corporations, financial incentives, 

 patent policies, and the various relationships between 

 xmiversities and industry in matters of research. 



In the structure of the National Research Council 

 many of the direct relationships and obhgations of the 

 Council to scientific work in industry are represented 

 through the Council's Division of Engineering and In- 

 dustrial Research (which has its offices with a full-time 

 staff in the Engineering Societies Building in New York 

 City). In order that the Council may be able to dis- 

 charge its functions in uidustrial fields, this Division has 

 recently been reorganized and its membership now con- 

 sists of three parts, a third representing the engineering 

 and technical societies of the country, of which some 18 

 will in rotating course be represented from time to time, 

 a third selected from the membership of the Engineering 

 Section of the National Academy of Sciences, and a 

 third selected at large, totalling 27 members altogether, 

 and including university men, directors of industrial 

 laboratories, men of affairs, and uidustrial and financial 



