Science and Industry 



results. There is a general conviction of the 

 illimitable control of mind over nature, which 

 in the industrial arts means an orderly attack by 

 trained men upon specific problems of technical 

 economy. The art of invention is now being 

 incorporated in the business structure of a trade ; 

 the modern engineering firm, the chemical or dye 

 works, not only collect notions and suggestions 

 from their employees, but keep on the premises 

 specialists, whose function it is to plan improve- 

 ments and work out new economies. This, how- 

 ever, is but one step in the process of the 

 organisation of invention that is going on. The 

 pace at which any genuinely profitable invention 

 can be utilised through the entire industrial world, 

 by the ever closer contact between members of 

 the same trade in different countries, leads to an 

 immense volume of inventive energy being con- 

 centrated upon essential points of progress. Not 

 only is a multitude of minds of different training 

 in every part of the civilised globe simultaneously 

 attacking the same problems in wireless tele- 

 graphy, punctureless tyres, or automatic stoking, 

 but they are attacking them in concert through 

 the constantly improved communication afforded 

 by scientific and technical journals and congresses. 

 This improved fertilisation of ideas is a progressive 

 economy of mental power which should exhibit 

 itself in an incalculably great acceleration of the 

 pace of invention. 



Here it is right to mention the immense economy 

 of inventive power likely to attend the reformed 



