September 12, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



415 



non-eonductibility of various svibstanees 

 and in their employment in the transmis- 

 sion-systems of electric light and power 

 'plants'; still another is given up largely 

 to the examination of the properties of the 

 materials of construction and to tests of 

 columns and beams of steel and iron. 

 There must thus be many laboratories, and 

 no one institution, however well endowed, 

 can hope to cover the whole realm of 

 science. 



So it happens that there is room and 

 opportunity for all, and the laboratories 

 directed by a single administration, as of 

 the Royal Institution of Great Britain, may 

 direct their energies under the eye of a 

 Dewar toward the discovery of the proper- 

 ties of the gases near the absolute zero and 

 to the determination of the temperature 

 of the interstellar spaces; while another, a 

 more widely extended, field may be cov- 

 ered, as by the Smithsonian Institution, 

 under a Langley, supervising and aiding 

 effectively the extension of human laiowl- 

 edge in all departments of science by 

 publication, by exchanging the papers of 

 men of science and transactions of learned 

 societies throughout the world, at the same 

 time prosecuting research-work in impor- 

 tant fields. Still another method may be 

 illustrated by a Carnegie Institution, with 

 its center of action fixed at the capital of 

 the nation, reaching out into every corner 

 of the land and promoting research in 

 every laboratory in which a competent 

 expert and a genius of siifficient caliber 

 may appear. It provides this investigator 

 with apparatus, lifts that famous inventor 

 or discoverer out of the depths of routine 

 and sets him free to carry on his glorious 

 enterprise at his own sweet will, rising to 

 the full height of his potentiality while 

 discovering and utilizing already initiated 

 researches of previously unknown and 

 perhaps otherwise never-to-be-known men 

 of genius. It provides apparatus and 



funds to enable such men to carry investi- 

 gations to ultimate, fruitful and important 

 ends. 



There is room and there is need for all 

 these, and for every other device for the 

 acquisition of knowledge that may be con- 

 ceived by the mind of man. Nature is infi- 

 nite in her variety and in character of 

 manifestation, and the universes are bound- 

 less in microcosm as in macrocosm. No 

 laboratory, ho investigator, nor any num- 

 ber or combination of laboratories, in the 

 hands of however many men of superlative 

 genius for research, can ever exhaust either 

 of these still unimagined fields or reach the 

 end of discovery of new realms; nor can 

 any amount of capital appropriated to the 

 promotion of research in pure and applied 

 science ever bring about a state of affairs 

 analogous to that of an industry outreaeh- 

 ing the market by its overproduction. 

 There will never be overproduction either 

 of men of genius or of contributions to 

 human knowledge, or to the comforts, the 

 intelligence or the moral advance of a 

 world like ours, capable of infinite progress. 



The laboratories of the colleges and the 

 great universities, the world over, have 

 been the most prolific sources of scientific 

 discovery and revelation. Recently, how- 

 ever, the industrial establishments of the 

 great nations of Europe and of the United 

 States have discovered that it is greatly to 

 their advantage to prosecute such investi- 

 gations for themselves in their own special 

 fields of work. The German chemists and 

 the electricians of the United States, and 

 in this country also, the faculties of the 

 engineering schools, perhaps more than any 

 other departments, have been thus engaged 

 in the promotion of the industrial move- 

 ments of their respective countries. 



Planning a curriculum for engineering 

 schools in 1871, my conviction was so strong 

 that the advancement of the applied sci- 

 ences through systematic and carefully 



