June 3, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



849 



wooden frame; this was about as far as 

 electricity went a century ago. Shortly 

 afterwards, I was confronted by those 

 gigantic electric installations at Niagara 

 Falls. To those who belittle the value 

 of scientific research, I recommend a com- 

 parison between this and Franklin's ma- 

 chine, a mere scientific toy, a clumsy 

 affair, that would at its best performance, 

 and if the weather was not too damp, give 

 off some small sparks; a contrivance so 

 useless in its time and so devoid of appar- 

 ent practical applications, that if some one 

 had told to a "shrewd business man" of 

 last century, what this field kept in store 

 for us, he would merely have shrugged his 

 shoulders in derision. But now behold the 

 hundreds of thousands of electrical horse- 

 power developed in those monstrous gener- 

 ators of Niagara Falls, sensitive as a 

 slender nerve, and yet running with the 

 precision of a watch; distributing power 

 and light to distant cities like Toronto and 

 Syracuse; running heavy railroad trains 

 as surely as the tiny drill of the dentist; 

 converting ores into metals; transforming 

 hundreds of tons of brine daily into caus- 

 tic soda and bleach; changing mixtures of 

 sand and coal into carborundum; enno- 

 bling plain coal into graphite, or produ- 

 cing from coal and limestone new sources 

 for illumination under the form of cal- 

 cium carbide ; or again fixing the nitrogen 

 of the air on calcium carbide to change it 

 into cyanamide, a most valuable synthetic 

 fertilizer; and at every succeeding year, 

 new chemical achievements of this kind are 

 still being brought forward by a set of 

 tireless workers. 



Let me ask a fair question of those who 

 underestimate the value of research: Has 

 that stupendous gap between Franklin's 

 toy and the power companies of Niagara 

 Falls been bridged by anything but by 

 scientific research of the highest order? 



Some of the better educated people in 

 this country begin to understand more and 

 more the necessity of scientific research. 

 Not so long ago, research work was only 

 carried out in the laboratories of univer- 

 sities or in those of a few highly developed 

 chemical or electrical companies; nowa- 

 days we find many intelligently conducted 

 enterprises devoting a considerable annual 

 outlay for systematic research work, where 

 the resources of the chemist, the physicist 

 and the biologist are used to good purpose. 



Unfortunately, the scope and method of 

 scientific research is difficult to under- 

 stand for the uninitiated. Some people 

 have only the haziest conceptions on this 

 subject. Some manufacturers, totally un- 

 aware of the requirements involved in this 

 work, in a half-skeptical way, grudgingly 

 conclude to organize a research depart- 

 ment, sometimes as a last resort to help 

 them through some difficulties; others do 

 it "to be in style" and simply to imitate 

 their more successful competitors. Fre- 

 quently they engage a young man with lit- 

 tle experience, who, outside of what he 

 studied in the technical school or at the 

 university, has everything to learn, and 

 who, besides that, is usually entrusted at 

 the very start with the most difficult prob- 

 lems. His salary is none too high, and his 

 action is very much restricted; sometimes 

 he is forbidden to study the current prac- 

 tical methods, or so-called "manufacturing 

 secrets," and is thus prevented from get- 

 ting acquainted with the very problems he 

 is supposed to solve. I have seen other 

 cases where the time of the research chem- 

 ist was filled with odd jobs of every kind. 

 After a while, when practical results are 

 not forthcoming fast enough, the book- 

 keeper confronts him with the list of ex- 

 penses which have been incurred by his 

 work; naturally some comments are ready 

 at hand how the same money spent on a 



