OcTOBER 30, 1913] 
by the president of the Institution of Water 
Engineers in his presidential address. 
“‘T have long thought,’’ he says, “‘and indeed it must 
be obvious to all who reflect upon the subject, that 
a great mass of experimental work is lost to the 
community because the results in many cases are not 
properly recorded, and even when complete records 
are kept, the results remain with the investigator,” 
and after referring to the advantages of combining 
for research the experience and opportunities of a 
number of people, he continues :—‘‘It occurs to me 
therefore to ask whether it is possible to make this 
institution ""—the Institution of Water Engineers—‘‘a 
clearing house for the handling of some at least of 
the many problems to which we devote time and 
thought.” 
Again, Sir Frederick Donaldson writes :— 
Research in the hands of firms and engineering 
undertakings has already been advocated, and no 
one would wish to see such efforts in any way ham- 
pered, but if it were possible to coordinate the work 
more than is done at present, and also to place the 
results at the disposal of the profession more readily 
than is now the case, great advantage may be ex- 
pected to result. Is it not worth considering whether 
inquiries should not be made to see if an Engineering 
Research Committee, the bounds of which should be 
much wider than membership of this institution alone 
[the Institution of Mechanical Engineers] could be 
got together with a view to organising, coordinating, 
and assisting research, more especially for engineer- 
ing purposes? 
Mr. Roberts’s paper commences with the state- 
ment that 
Although engineering as an applied science has now 
reached a high state of development, and has in many 
of its branches become highly specialised, it is some- 
what remarkable that no definite and generally recog- 
nised system has been formulated for making known 
for the benefit of the profession as a whole the results 
of the numerous private researches and experiments 
which are continually being carried on. 
The paper describes a few of the researches 
of general interest carried on at Woolwich 
Arsenal 
with the hope that it may induce others to come 
forward and add to the stock of general knowledge 
and it may thus form the nucleus of a clearing house 
of engineering information. 
Sir Frederick Donaldson goes farther than the 
formation of such a clearing-house; he suggests, 
as we have seen, in addition the organisation, 
coordination, and assistance of research: we will 
return to this point later. 
To many readers of Nature interested mainly 
in branches of science other than engineering, the 
need for a clearing-house may appear strange. A 
man after he has carried through a research in 
chemistry, physics, or one of the _ biological 
sciences, is not usually averse to giving his paper 
to the world. He communicates it to one of the 
scientific societies. In due time it appears in the 
journal, and is abstracted into one or more of the 
numerous and valuable periodicals which under- 
take such work for the great benefit of other 
investigators. But it is otherwise with much 
engineering or other technical research. The 
NO. 2296, VOL. 92] 
NATURE 
269 
work is carried out for a special purpose: to 
determine the proper material to use in some 
structure; to see if some alloy which it would 
be convenient to employ for a certain machine 
will retain its properties under the conditions of 
temperature and stress to which it will be subject; 
to settle the form of bolt or screw-thread which 
for a given diameter offers the greatest resistance 
to shocks or impact and the like. Mr. Roberts’s 
paper gives us examples. He records the results 
of tests on many specimens of timber used in the 
arsenal; of an investigation into the standard 
shapes and dimensions of tensile specimens; of 
numerous experiments on aluminium alloys. He 
describes a special instrument for indicating the 
yield-point of tensile specimens, and discusses the 
effect of the time-factor upon results of tensile 
testing and the unification of methods of report- 
ing. Any of these investigations might have been 
carried out in some other works, and the result, 
when it had been utilised for the job in hand, 
forgotten and left to pass into oblivion. 
Investigations of the kind, though of real value, 
may scarcely be of sufficient importance to be 
worked up as a paper for communication to one 
of the technical societies—always a somewhat 
elaborate business—and, indeed, results and 
methods sufficient for the purpose in view, and 
deserving of record, would be felt not unfrequently 
to be unsuitable for an evening’s formal dis- 
cussion. Again, there is the desire, sometimes 
the necessity, to keep the results private, and the 
disinclination to spend time in working them up 
for publication. Possibly some of these diffi- 
culties could be met by a committee guiding a 
staff of men whose business it would be to keep 
in intimate touch with works in which investiga- 
tions of general interest were going on. The 
knowledge of these men would enable them to 
suggest to the committee what researches it was 
important should be secured for the public: they 
might assist the workers in preparing these for 
publication, or, where complete publication was 
not necessary or desired, in abstracting such parts 
as could usefully be placed on record. The com- 
mittee, or the committee’s records, would in time 
become a storehouse of information to be searched 
by a would-be investigator before he commenced 
his own experiments. Useful knowledge would 
be disseminated and overlapping prevented. The 
difficulties of the attempt are fairly obvious. Suc- 
cess, if it could be achieved on a sufficient scale, 
would be a real advantage to engineers. 
But this is distinct from Sir Frederick Donald- 
son’s suggestion of organising and advising as to 
research. To attempt this for the whole field of 
engineering science is a heavy task, and it may be 
questioned whether such work is not better done 
by a number of special committees, each working 
in a more limited field. Possibly a main com- 
mittee like the main committee of the engineering 
standards committee is wanted to start the sub- 
ordinate bodies and coordinate their work. Such 
special committees do exist at present. Prof. 
Hopkinson mentioned in the discussion on Mr. 
