NOVEMBBE 9, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



701 



IV. RESULTS. 



A very pertinent inquiry is, what are the 

 results of all this expenditure ? Might not 

 more good be accomplished by State aid to 

 some existing technical school or university? 

 The results attained must be set by the side 

 of the objects which the founders of the in- 

 stitution had in view in order to ascertain 

 whether the sequel has justified their pre- 

 dictions. In the memorials to which ref- 

 erence has already been made, Professor 

 von Helmholtz and Dr. Werner Siemens 

 pointed out the advantages likely to accrue 

 to Germany from the maintenance of an 

 imperial institution for research, which 

 should at the same time assume the cog- 

 nate function of fixing and certifying stand- 

 ards of mechanical and physical measure- 

 ments. Attention was drawn to the fact 

 that other countries, notably England, had 

 enjoyed great renown in science because of 

 the brilliant researches and discoveries of 

 some of her scientific men, who had the 

 good fortune to be possessed of leisure and 

 large pi-ivate means, and the scientific spirit 

 to devote them to investigations demanding 

 both as a sine qua non. 



These conditions the memorialists de- 

 clared were lacking in the fatherland. Her 

 scholars who had the enthusiasm and the 

 capacity for exact scientific investigation 

 possessed neither the private fortune to de- 

 vote to it, nor the uninterrupted time for 

 the execution of the work. They were to 

 be found among the men engaged in teach- 

 ing, but their professional duties absorbed 

 their time to such an extent that only an 

 inadequate residue remained ; and even 

 this little was divided into fractions too 

 small to admit of the sustained and con- 

 tinuous attention which any important in- 

 vestigation demands. 



It was further pointed out that if the 

 government would supply the conditions 

 favorable to scientific discovery, the men 

 could be found whose work would reflect 



great credit on the State, while the interac- 

 tion between pure science and its applica- 

 tions to arts and manufactures would put 

 Germany in the forefront of scientific re- 

 nown and of the intelligent application of 

 science to useful purposes. 



It was further urged by von Helmholtz 

 that the brilliant investigations of Regnault 

 and other French physicists many years 

 ago should now be repeated with the su- 

 perior methods and instrumental appliances 

 available at the present time. These in- 

 vestigations drew the attention of the sci- 

 entific world to France and made it the 

 focus of scientific interest. Her instru- 

 ment makers, even up to the present, have 

 reaped a rich reward in foreign orders for 

 instruments made eminently desirable and 

 almost indispensable by these distinguished 

 French investigators. 



Other problems, too, needed solution, 

 problems forced to the front by modern re- 

 quirements and discoveries. The applica- 

 tions of electricity, for example, present 

 new questions for science to answer, while 

 the interests of the consumer at the same 

 time call for some form of control by the 

 State of the instruments employed in ful- 

 filling contracts. The very units in which 

 such measurements are made need to be 

 authoritatively settled — a task demanding 

 the highest manipulative skill in experi- 

 ment and the most refined appliances 

 which experience can suggest and money 

 purchase. 



The German government admitted the 

 force of these considerations and made 

 splendid provision, for both pure science 

 and its technical applications, by founding 

 the Imperial Institution at Charlottenburg. 

 The results have already justified in a re- 

 markable manner all the expenditure of 

 labor and money. The renown in exact 

 scientific measurements formerly possessed 

 by France and England has now been 

 largely transferred to Germany. Formerly 



