June 2, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



773 



and there are very few corporations who 

 would be willing to maintain a large, fully 

 equipped research laboratory of the type 

 discussed, although a few such laboratories 

 are well known to be in existence, but Brit- 

 ish industry has been brought very much 

 together during the past eighteen months 

 and the organization of industry is already 

 a familiar phrase. Why, then, should Eng- 

 land not establish a National Industrial 

 Research Laboratory to assist all British 

 manufacturers and to develop the theory 

 underlying the great fundamental indus- 

 tries on which British work depends? 

 Such a laboratory could take the theory 

 from the universities, or where the theory 

 was lacking, develop it and apply it to the 

 separate industries, working out the results 

 on a semi-manufacturing scale and finally 

 passing it on to the manufacturer. It may 

 be of interest to glance at the possible size 

 and scope of such an organization and I 

 have attempted to formulate a scheme which 

 will represent the minimum which would 

 be required. 



A laboratory on the smallest scale ade- 

 quate to British industry would, at the 

 beginning, require a staff of about two 

 thousand men, one thousand of them scien- 

 tifically trained and the other thousand 

 assistants and workmen. It should have 

 about three or four hundred men of the 

 rank of professor or assistant professor in 

 the universities or of works manager or 

 assistant manager or chief chemist in the 

 factory. It would require land and build- 

 ings costing about $3,000,000 and its annual 

 upkeep with allowance for expansion would 

 be about $4,000,000. 



Vast as these figures are, they are infini- 

 tesimal compared with the value of the in- 

 dustries whom they would serve. They 

 represent a charge of less than one per cent, 

 and probably not more than one fifth per 

 cent, of the net profits of British industry ; 



moreover, after the initial period has been 

 paid for such a laboratory might be self- 

 supporting and might, indeed, finally, make 

 a very handsome profit on the original in- 

 vestment. 



Suppose that such a laboratory patented 

 all inventions and licensed manufacturers 

 to use them, then, it is not too much to ex- 

 pect that after the first five or six years it 

 would be paying for itself, and that five 

 years later it would be able to establish a 

 great many subsidiary institutions from its 

 profits ; at anj^ rate, such a vast laboratory 

 would produce far more results at lower 

 cost than would result from any other, ex- 

 penditure of a comparable sum of money 

 on industrial research by the British indus- 

 tries. 



I believe, however, that within the life- 

 time of most, if not all, of us we shall see 

 such extensions of industrial research as 

 will make all that we now have in mind 

 seem insignificant, and it is because I be- 

 lieve so strongly in the importance of the 

 subject that I have endeavored to collect 

 some impressions on the subject and to 

 present them in this paper. 



C. E. Kenneth Mees 

 Research Labobatoet, 

 Eastman Kodak Company, 

 EocHESTEK, N. y., 

 February 10, 1916 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND ERASMUS 

 DARWIN: WITH SOME UNPUB- 

 LISHED CORRESPONDENCE! 



It is not generally known that Benjamin- 

 Franklin and Erasmus Darwin were corre- 

 spondents and personal friends. They first 

 met, as far as can be learned, some time dur- 

 ing Franklin's second mission to England, be- 

 tween 1764 and 1775, and, attracted to each 

 other by their common scientific interests, a 



1 1 wish to acknowledge my deep thanks to Mr. 

 I. Minis Hays, secretary of the American Philo- 

 sophical Society, for his kind permission to trans- 

 cribe and publish the correspondence here given. 



