November 7, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



645 



in every language. The Edison method is 

 a synonym for specialized, intense research 

 which knows no rest until everything has 

 been tried. Because of that method and the 

 unique genius which directs its application, 

 Italian operas are heard amid Alaskan 

 snows and in the depths of African forests ; 

 every phase of life and movement of inter- 

 est throughout the world is caught, regis- 

 tered, transported and reproduced that we 

 may have lion hunts in our drawing-rooms 

 and the coronation in a five-cent theater. 

 From his laboratory have come the incan- 

 descent lamp, multiple telegraphy, new 

 methods of treating ores and a thousand 

 other diverse inventions, the development 

 of a single one of which has sometimes 

 involved millions. 



The development of the automobile, and 

 especially of the low-priced American car, 

 is a thing of yesterday. To-day a single 

 manufacturer turns out two cars a minute, 

 while another is expanding his output to 500 

 cars a day. Every 23 days the total engine 

 horse-power of new cars of one small type 

 equals the energy of the entire Mississippi 

 river development at Keokuk. Every 46 

 days this engine output rises to the total 

 energy development at Niagara Falls. The 

 amount of gasoline consumed upon our 

 roads is equal to the water supply of a 

 town of 40,000 inhabitants, and its cost on 

 Sundays and holidays is $1,000,000. 



It goes without saying that any such 

 development as that of the automobile in- 

 dustry in America has been based upon and 

 vitalized by an immeasvirable amount of re- 

 search, the range and influence of which 

 extends through many other industries. It 

 has accelerated the application of heat 

 treatment more than any other agency. 

 One tire manufacturer spends $100,000 a 

 year upon his laboratory. The research de- 

 partment organized by my associates for 

 one automobile company comprised within 



its staff experts in automobile design, 

 mathematics, metallography and heat treat- 

 ments, lubrication, gaseous fuels, steel and 

 alloys, paints and painting practise, in 

 addition to the chemists, physicists and as- 

 sistants for routine or special work. 



The beautiful city whose hospitality has 

 so greatly added to the pleasure and suc- 

 cess of the present meeting of our society is 

 the home of two highly scientific industries 

 of which any community may well be 

 proud. The Bausch & Lomb Optical Com- 

 pany, through its close affiliation with the 

 world-famed Zeiss works at Jena, renders 

 immediately available in this country the 

 latest results of German optical research. 

 The Eastman Kodak Company is perhaps 

 more generally and widely known than even 

 the Zeiss works, and in capital, organiza- 

 tion, value of product and profit' of opera- 

 tion will bear comparison with the great 

 German companies whose business is ap- 

 plied science. Like them, it spends money 

 with a lavish hand for the promotion of 

 technical research and for the fundamental 

 investigation of the scientific bases on which 

 its industry rests. As you have happily 

 been made aware, this work is carried on in 

 the superb new research laboratories of the 

 company with an equipment which is prob- 

 ably unrivalled anywhere for its special 

 purposes. The laboratory exemplifies a 

 notable feature in American industrial re- 

 search laboratories in that it makes provi- 

 sion for developing new processes first on 

 the laboratory scale and then on the minia- 

 ture factory scale. 



To no chapter in the history of industrial 

 research can Americans turn with greater 

 pride than to the one which contains the 

 epic of the electrochemical development at 

 Niagara Falls. It starts with the wonderful 

 story of aluminum. Discovered in Ger- 

 many in 1828 by Wohler, it cost in 1855, 

 $90 a pound. In 1886, it had fallen to $12. 



