G.— ENGINEERING 159 



by the development of new methods. Obsolescence is indeed so rapid 

 nowadays, that it is not unusual for new plant to be written off in four 

 years ; and many valuable inventions have been bought up by vested 

 interests and suppressed in order to save the greater loss that their ex- 

 ploitation would involve to already operating plant. It is therefore not 

 surprising that there is not always an enthusiasm for unrestricted research 

 or a readiness to praise it. But it is a shortsighted policy. 



I have glanced at the rise and growth of the modern research movement. 

 Co-ordination and co-operation have done much to link together the 

 various elements, but there has as yet been no general national plan. 

 For totalitarian states such things are not so difficult ; but for that reason 

 democratic countries too must organise and co-operate more closely than 

 ever before. Groups of unrelated, often competitive, bodies cannot be 

 really effective. In my opinion the time must come when every research 

 organisation will be linked by- some form of affiliation to a central control- 

 ling body. This would become inevitable in time if only to prevent 

 hopeless overlapping and duplication, with attendant waste of energy, 

 time and money. There is another direction where centralisation is 

 equally necessary. I refer to publication. At present if the results of 

 research are not kept as trade secrets, they are often broadcast in such 

 a multitude of journals, books, papers, addresses, etc., that it is almost 

 impossible for one who is studying any particular branch to avoid un- 

 wittingly covering ground already covered by previous workers. We have 

 all experienced the difficulty of trying to collect all the latest information 

 on the subject we have been called upon to deal with. I believe that 

 approximately thirty thousand scientific periodicals are published through- 

 out the world, each of which no doubt may contain the results of research 

 in some form or other. In our own country no definite and practical 

 scheme has yet been conceived for making available the results of research. 

 There should, moreover, be some type of clearing-house of engineering 

 information, such as would collect, collate and make immediately available 

 all new, data discovered. Some partial success has been attained in this 

 direction in more than one way. The Executive Council of Imperial 

 Agricultural Bureaux, for instance, an autonomous authority that deals 

 with the finance and administration of ten scientific bureaux, works in 

 close touch not only with all the councils but with other research centres 

 such as the Low Temperature Research Station at Cambridge, the 

 Building Research Station at Watford, and so on. If it be impossible 

 even to work out a similar organisation for engineering on a national or 

 world-wide basis, it cannot be impossible to establish at least a clearing- 

 house system at a relatively small expense in co-operation with the Depart- 

 ment of Scientific and Industrial Research. This Department, with the 

 research associations which it partly finances, and others with which it is 

 associated provides the ideal nucleus for such an information service, but 

 Engineering must work out its own scheme. 



I am afraid I have no definite proposals to make — at least at this juncture. 

 All I have desired to do is to ventilate a subject of paramount importance 



