144 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. L. No. 1285 



expressed that they could turn so readily from 

 fundamental researches for the increase of 

 knowledge to the most intensely practical 

 undertakings. 



But a moment's consideration will show 

 how easily the change has been effected. An 

 eminent physicist develops a new range-finder, 

 which is adopted by the navy because of its 

 superiority to any existing instrument. But 

 what could be less surprising, in view of his 

 life-long success in devising new optical in- 

 struments for physical research? 



Several men of science, working in close 

 cooperation, effect great improvements in a 

 device for accurately locating invisible sub- 

 marines, even when completely at rest and 

 emitting no sound. But the fundamental 

 principles and methods involved in this war 

 research are precisely the same that these in- 

 vestigators have employed for years in their 

 electrical and astronomical investigations. 

 And so I might go on, mentioning scores of 

 important war services performed by phys- 

 icists, mathematicians, chemists, astronomers, 

 meteorologists, geologists, botanists, zoologists, 

 bacteriologists, anthropologists, psychologists 

 and investigators dealing with every branch 

 of science, whose previous efforts have been 

 wholly devoted to the advancement of knowl- 

 edge. 



Some of these men, when seriously reflect- 

 ing upon their responsibilities at the close of 

 the war, have hesitated to return to their old 

 tasks. They have often been applauded, by 

 those who know nothing of research, for their 

 newly-discovered ability to accomplish " prac- 

 tical" results, and to contribute in this ob- 

 vious way to the public welfare. Or they 

 have been offered by the industries salaries 

 far in excess of those they receive from the 

 university or technical school. "Which way 

 shall they turn? How may they best serve 

 the world? 



These questions have been clearly answered 

 long since, not only by students of science, 

 but no less emphatically by great leaders of 

 industry. ISTo American engineer stands higher 

 than J. J. Carty, vice-president of the 

 American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 

 recently colonel in the Signal Corps, in charge 



of our lines of comtnunication in Europe. In 

 his address as president of the American Insti- 

 tute of Electrical Engineers, after showing 

 that the industries, through self-interest, will 

 provide amply for industrial research, Colonel 

 Carty dwells on the importance of funda- 

 mental researches in science, and remarks: 



By every means in our power, therefore, let us 

 stow our appreeiation of pure science and let us 

 forward the work of the pure scientists, for they 

 are the advance guard of civilization. They point 

 the way which we must follow. Let us arouse the 

 people of our country to the wonderful possibilities 

 of scientific discovery and to the responsibility to 

 support it which rests upon them, and I am sure 

 they will respond generously and effectively. 



Or take the word of W. E. Whitney, di- 

 rector of the great industrial laboratory of the 

 General Electric Company: 



Necessity is not the mother of invention; knowl- 

 edge and experiment are its parents. This is 

 clearly seen in the case of many industrial discov- 

 eries; high-speed cutting tools were not a necessity 

 which preceded, but an application which followed, 

 the discovery of the properties of tungsten- 

 chromium-iron alloys; so, too, the use of titanium 

 in arc lamps and of vanadium in steel were sequels 

 to the industrial preparation of these metals, and 

 not discoveries made by sheer force of necessity. 



Or remember the statement of Huxley: 

 I weigh my words when I say that if the nation 

 could purchase a potential Watt, or Davy, or 

 Faraday, at the cost of a hundred thousand pounds 

 down, he would be dirt-cheap at the money. It is 

 a mere commonplace and everyday piece of knowl- 

 edge that what these men did has produced untold 

 millions of wealth, in the narrowest economical 

 sense of the word. 



How true this is, how directly the greatest 

 practical advances are dependent upon re- 

 searches made solely' for the advancement of 

 knowledge, without any thought of immediate 

 application, is well illustrated in the case of 

 wireless telegraphy. The existence of waves 

 in the ether, much longer than those that give 

 the impression of light, but traveling with the 

 same velocity, was first definitely shown by 

 Maxwell, in his purely mathematical investi- 

 gations on the electromagnetic theory of light. 

 For twenty years these waves were known 

 only in his equations, but in 1888 Hertz found 



