Miscellaneous, 



66 



[January, 1912. 



have been especially developed for those 

 uses. The electrical engineer prefers 

 copper for his conductor, certain irons 

 for the frames of apparatus, other special 

 irons and steels for the shafts, the 

 magnetic fields, etc., and the specializa- 

 tion to best meet specific wants is still 

 under way. I suppose that this kind of 

 complex development is largely responsi- 

 ble for research laboratories. 



A research laboratory is a place where 

 men are especially occupied with new 

 problems, presumably not too far 

 in advance of technical application. 

 By this group devoting its entire 

 attention to the difficulties of meeting 

 already well-defined necessities or of 

 newly defining apd meeting together, 

 the efficiency of those processes is 

 increased. Men especially trained for 

 this very purpose are employed, and 

 they are usually just as unfitted for 

 successfully manufacturing as those who 

 efficiently reproduce are of discovering 

 or inventing. It is merely an extension 

 of the principle of the maximum effi- 

 ciency. A man with his entire atten- 

 tion devoted for months or years at 

 a time to the difficulties of a single 

 problem should be better able to reach 

 a solution than the man who can devote 

 only irregalar intervals to it. He should 

 then also be the better prepared for 

 a second problem. 



A research laboratory is also a place 

 equipped with apparatus especially de- 

 signed for experimental work. In a 

 busy manufacturing plant, if a foreman 

 has an idea pointing towards an im- 

 provement of his product, he frequently 

 has great difficulty in finding the time, 

 the necessary idle apparatus, the raw 

 materials and the incentive to try it. 

 In the laboratory all of these are com- 

 bined, and there is added a system of 

 co-operation of permanently recording 

 results and an atmosphere or research. 



The mathematics of co-operation of 

 men and tools is interesting in this 

 connection. Separated men trying their 

 individual experiments contribute in 

 proportion to their numbers, and their 

 work may be called mathematically 

 additive. The effect of a single piece of 

 apparatus given to one man is also 

 additive only, but when a group of 

 men are co-operating, as distinct from 

 merely operating, their work rises with 

 some higher power of the number than 

 the first power. It approaches the 

 square for two men and the cube for 

 three. Two men co-operating with two 

 different and special pieces of apparatus, 

 say a special furnace and a pyrometer, 

 or an hydraulic press and new chemical 

 substances are more powerful than 



their arithmetical sum. These facts 

 doubtless assist as assets of a research 

 laboratory. 



When a central organization, such as 

 a laboratory, has access to all parts of 

 a large manufacturing plant, and is 

 forced sooner or later to come in contact 

 with the various processes and prob- 

 lems, the various possibilities and 

 appliances, it can hardly fail to apply, 

 is some degree, the above law of powers. 



As a possible means of illustrating 

 the almost certain assistance which one 

 part of manufacturing plant may give 

 another when they are connected by 

 experimenting departments or research 

 laboratories, and how one thread of 

 works starts another, I will briefly 

 review part of a single fairly connected 

 line of work in our laboratory- In 1911 

 the Meter Department wanted electric- 

 ally conducting rods of a million ohms 

 resistance. These were to be one- 

 quarter inch diameter by one inch 

 length. In connection with this work 

 we had become fairly familiar with 

 published attempts at making any type 

 of such high resistances. Some kind 

 of porcelain body containing a very 

 little conducting material seemed a fair 

 starting formula after the resistance 

 of almost all kind of materials had 

 been considered. Our own porcelain 

 department was of great help in show- 

 ing us how to get a good start. We 

 learned how and what to mix to get 

 a fair procelain, and we found that 

 small quantities of carborundum or of 

 graphite would give us the desired 

 resistance about once in a hundred 

 trials. The rods could be made, but the 

 difference in their resistance when taken 

 from the porcelain kiln, and when they 

 were made as nearly alike as we could 

 make them was often so many thousand- 

 fold, that something new had to be 

 done to make a practical success. A 

 small electric furnace was then devised 

 for baking the rod?, and this was so 

 arranged that the rate of rise of temper- 

 ature was under control and was also 

 recorded. The desired result was ob- 

 tained, and this work was thus finished. 

 It gave us a certain stock of knowledge 

 and assurance. 



At that time a very similar problem 

 was bothering one of the engineering 

 departments. Lightning arrester rods, 

 part of the apparatus tor protecting 

 power liues from lightning, were 

 needed. Their dimensions were f x 6", 

 and they needed to have a definite, but 

 in this case, low resistance, and could 

 apparently not be baked in a porcelain 

 kiln. The usual temperature variations 

 in such a kiln are so great that in prac- 



