374 PROPOSAL OF AN INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 



rather necessary to assist its progress as far as possible. 

 For this certainly already much has been done in 

 Germany through the highly developed system of 

 scientific technical instruction, for which the best con- 

 ceivable arrangements have been made at the numerous 

 universities and polytechnic schools. There was a total 

 absence however of any organization for the furtherance 

 of scientific investigation, i. e. for the extension of the 

 area of our physical knowledge, on which technical 

 progress is also dependent. In Prussia years ago the 

 necessity of an institute had been perceived, which 

 should have for its object the scientific support 

 of engineering and especially of applied mechanics, 

 and a commission, to which I was summoned, had 

 elaborated a plan for such an institute, which was 

 to be added to the new polytechnic institution in 

 course of erection at Charlottenburg. This was how- 

 ever no solution of the problem of furthering scientific 

 investigation itself. 



The necessity of an institute, not subserving in- 

 struction but scientific research exclusively, had very 

 strikingly appeared at the conferences on the establish- 

 ment of international electric standards in Paris. There 

 was found no suitable place in all Germany for carry- 

 ing out the difficult work of exactly producing the 

 absolute resistance unit of Weber. The laboratories 

 of the universities are, in conformity with their desti- 

 nation, arranged for the purpose of instruction and 

 indeed as a rule entirely claimed for that object, 

 German scientists have nevertheless in the leisure-hours, 



