764 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1118 



industry and with such theory as was then 

 known ; that his successors failed to keep up 

 with the progress of the industry and with 

 the theory of the cognate sciences ; and that 

 sooner or later some other genius working 

 on the subject advanced the available 

 knowledge and again gave a new spurt to 

 the development of that industry in another 

 locality. 



Thus, in the early days of the technical 

 industries the development of new processes 

 and methods was often dependent upon 

 some one man, who frequently became the 

 owner of the firm which exploited his dis- 

 coveries. But with the increasing complex- 

 ity of industry and the parallel increase in 

 the amount of technical and scientific in- 

 formation necessitating increasing speciali- 

 zation, the work of investigation and devel- 

 opment which used to be performed by an 

 individual has been delegated to special de- 

 partments of the organization, one example 

 of which is the modern industrial research 

 laboratory. 



The triumphs which have already been 

 won by these research laboratories are com- 

 mon knowledge. The incandescent lamp in- 

 dustry, for instance, originated in the 

 United States with the carbon lamp, but 

 was nearly lost to the United States when 

 the tungsten filament was developed, only 

 to be rescued from that danger by the re- 

 search laboratory of the General Electric 

 Company, who fought for the prize in sight 

 and developed first the drawn wire filament 

 and then the nitrogen lamp ; and we may be 

 sure that if the theoretical and practical 

 work of the research laboratory of the Gen- 

 eral Electric Company were not kept up the 

 American manufacturers could by no means 

 rest secure in their industry, as, undoubt- 

 edly, later development in electric lighting 

 will come and the industry might be trans- 

 ferred, in part if not completely, to the 

 originators of any improvement. Manufac- 



turing concerns and especially the power- 

 ful, well-organized companies who are the 

 leaders of industry in this country, can, of 

 course, retain their leadership for a num- 

 ber of years against more progressive but 

 smaller and less completely organized com- 

 petitors, but eventually they can ensure 

 their position only by having in their em- 

 ploy men who are competent to keep in 

 touch with and themselves to advance the 

 subject, and the maintenance of a labo- 

 ratory staffed by such men is a final insur- 

 ance against eventual loss of the control of 

 its industry by any concern. 



There was a time when the chief makers 

 of photographic lenses were the British 

 firms whose owners had been largely instru- 

 mental in developing the early theory of 

 lens optics, but that position was lost en- 

 tirely as a result of the scientific work of 

 the German opticians, led by Ernst Abbe; 

 in a smaller division of optical work, how- 

 ever, the staff of Adam Hilger, Ltd., has 

 been able by its superior knowledge and 

 intensive study of the manufacture of mod- 

 ern spectroscopes to transfer a large por.- 

 tion of the manufacture of such instru- 

 ments from Germany to England again. 



In a recent book review in Nature of 

 December 2, page 366, it was pointed out 

 that the rare earth industry has been chiefly 

 concentrated in Germany. The manufac- 

 ture of gas mantles, discovered by an Aus- 

 trian, developed an entirely new chemical 

 industry which has been carried on almost 

 completely under German auspices. It 

 seems to be suggested at the present time by 

 some of the leaders of British industry that 

 such specialized chemical operations as the 

 manufacture of compounds of the rare 

 earths can be transferred to Great Britain 

 by the application of superior financial 

 methods or better business foresight or even 

 merely more intense application. I do not 

 believe that any one who is acquainted with 



