THE INSTITUTE AND THE UNIVERSITIES. 
Universities, though exceedingly willing, are not ideally placed for 
research work. This difficulty is quite recognised in other countries 
as well as our own. Dr. OC. E. K. Mees,* in an article upon “The 
Organization of Industrial Scientific Research,” recently wrote :— 
“Various schemes have been suggested for enabling the Universi- 
ties to carry out research work of value to the manufacturers; but 
if it is believed that the work chiefly required for the development 
and maintenance of industry deals with the fundamental theory 
of the subject, it will be seen that this cannot possibly be carried 
on to any large extent in collaboration with a University; it 
requires a continuity of application by the same investigators over 
long periods with special apparatus, and with the development of 
special methods which cannot be expected from any University. 
This necessity for continuous work along the same line is, indeed, 
the greatest difficulty in making use of the Universities for indus- 
trial research. The conditions of a University laboratory neces- 
sarily make it almost impossible to obtain the continuous applica- 
tion to one problem required for success in industrial research, and, 
indeed, in the interests of teaching, which is the primary business 
of a University, such devotion to one problem is undesirable, as 
tending to one-sidedness. 
There are also difficulties in obtaining the co-operation of manu- 
facturers with Universities, and in the application of University 
work to industry, which I see no hope whatever of overcoming; the 
Universities do not understand the requirements of the manufac- 
turer, and the manufacturer distrusts, because he does. not under- 
stand, the language of the professor. Moreover, it is quite essential _ 
that any investigator who has worked out a new process or material 
should be able to apply his work on a semi-manufacturing scale, 
so that it can be transferred to the factory by skilled men who have 
already met the general difficulties which would be encountered in 
factory application. This development on a semi-manufacturing 
scale is, indeed, one of the most difficult parts of research, resuli- 
ing in a new product, and the importance of it is shown by the 
fact that all the large industrial research laboratories, however 
concerned they may be with the theory of the subject, have, as 
parts of the laboratory, and under the direction of the research 
staff, experimental manufacturing plants which duplicate many of 
the processes employed in the factory itself.” 
It is hoped that, as far as Australia is concerned, the Institute will 
soon be able to supply this defect. . 
When the Institute is full-fledged it will do the Universities another 
service of a highly valuable character, such as is performed by the 
* Head of the Eastman Kodak Research Laboratory, Rochester, U.S. A. 
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