June 2, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



765 



the business men of several countries will 

 believe that the British manufacturer is 

 lacking either in financial capacity or in 

 business foresight or in application, but 

 none of these things by themselves will de- 

 velop a chemical industry. The only thing 

 that will attract and retain the business is 

 the manufacture and development of new 

 and improved products, and this can be 

 done only by the use of more and better re- 

 search chemists and physicists than the 

 competitor is willing to employ. In fact, 

 at the present time it seems to be clear that 

 the future of any industry depends upon its 

 being able to command a sufficient supply 

 of knowledge directed towards the improve- 

 ment of the product and the development 

 of the methods of that industry, and that 

 any failure in this respect may involve 

 eventual failure. While this view of the 

 importance of research work to the indus- 

 tries is now obtaining universal acceptance, 

 I feel that many who assent without hesita- 

 tion to the value of a research laboratory 

 still take far too low a view of the work 

 which it should perform. 



Industrial laboratories may be classified 

 in three general divisions: 



1. Works laboratories exerting analytical 



control over materials or processes. 



2. Industrial laboratories working on im- 



provements in product and in proc- 

 esses, tending to lessen cost of produc- 

 tion and to introduce new products on 

 the market. 



3. Laboratories working on pure theory and 



on the fundamental sciences associated 



with the industry. 

 The first class of laboratory is so obvi- 

 ously necessary that practically all works 

 are so equipped, and frequently each de- 

 partment of a factory maintains its own 

 control laboratory. The second class of 

 laboratories are frequently termed "re- 

 search" laboratories, and this type has 



been very largely instrumental in forward- 

 ing the introduction of scientific control into 

 industry. 



Unfortunately, however, the immediate 

 success of the application of scientific meth- 

 ods to industrial processes has often led 

 the executives of commercial enterprises 

 into the belief that such work along directly 

 practical lines is capable of indefinite exten- 

 sion and in this belief a number of labo- 

 ratories have been started, some of which, at 

 any rate, have been sources of disappoint- 

 ment in consequence of a failure to grasp 

 the fact that if the whole future of an in- 

 dustry is dependent on the work of the re- 

 search laboratory, then what is required is 

 not merely an improvement in processes or 

 a cheapening in the cost of manfaeture but 

 fundamental developments in the whole 

 subject in which the manufacturing firm is 

 interested; for this purpose it is clear 

 that something very different from the 

 usual works laboratory will be required, and 

 that in order to obtain progress the work 

 of the research laboratory must be directed 

 primarily toward the fundamental theory 

 of the subject. This is a point which seems 

 to be continually overlooked in discussions 

 of industrial scientific research, where much 

 stress is generally laid upon the immediate 

 returns which can be obtained from works 

 laboratories, and upon the advantage of 

 scientific control of the operations; but in 

 every case where the effect of research work 

 has been very marked, that work has been 

 directed not towards the superficial proc- 

 esses of industry but toward the fundamen- 

 tal and underlying theory of the subject. 

 Prom Abbe 's work on lenses, and Abbe and 

 Schott 's work on glasses, to the work of the 

 research laboratory of the General Electric 

 Company on the residual gases in lamp 

 vacua, which resulted in the production of 

 the nitrogen tungsten lamp and the 

 Coolidge X-ray tube, this will be seen to be 



