EDITORIAL, 
GLASS RESEARCH ASSOCIATION. _ 
At the present time there are approximately 400 firms in the 
United Kingdom engaged in glass and glassware manufacture. They 
employ about 50,000 workers. Under the wgis of the Department of 
Scientific and Industrial Research, a Research Association has been 
established, and it is expected that, before the scientifie work of the 
association is actually commenced, every one of these 400 firms will have 
applied for membership. The importance of the industry has led the 
new Department to generously subsidize the investigations, and a sum 
not exceeding £75,000 will be granted from public funds within a period 
of five years, on condition that during this period members of the asso- 
ciation contribute an aggregate sum of not less than £5,000 a year in 
subscriptions. 
THE GLASSWARE INDUSTRY. 
It is now widely known that, among the industries which have been 
profoundly influenced by the war, the glass and glassware industry of 
the United Kingdom occupies a foremost place. Not only have the pre- 
war products of this industry, as they existed in this country before the 
war, been found essential for a wide range of national purposes during 
war-time, but the necessity has also been forcibly realized for creating 
certain special sections of this’ industry, previously non-existent in the 
country, to supply glass and glassware, glass instruments, and glass 
apparatus directly necessary for the prosecution of the war, as well as 
similar articles equally vital as being indispensable for the efficient 
operation of other industries. The importance of the glass industry to 
the economic life of the nation is to be measured largely by its effect 
upon, and indispensability to, other industries. This has been fully 
recognised by the Government in the inclusion of scientific glassware 
and illuminating glassware, as well as optical glass, in the schedule of 
unstable “key” industries. But the revolutionizing effect of the war 
upon the glass industry is not alone manifest in the creation of these 
“key” sections which previously were monopolized by Germany and 
Austria, whose glass manufacturers had attained great influence and 
reputation, and certainly dominated the markets of the world, or even 
in the resuscitation of other sections (e.g., the so-called “ flint” glass 
sections) of the industry, which, though long established in this country, 
were rapidly declining as the result of unfair foreign competition. The 
feature even more significant than either of these, and the ground of the 
future hopé that a stable and prosperous British glass industry will be 
firmly established, is the shedding of the old spirit of isolation and 
exclusiveness which possessed the manufacturers of this country. Invari- 
ably in each works there existed a policy of secrecy, together with an 
unwarrayted satisfaction with old-fashioned rule-of-thumb manufac- 
_ turing ideas and an absence of scientific method. This inevitably 
resulted in inability to organize for production upon progressive modern 
lines. During the war there has been a wonderful ‘awakening to the 
new possibilities of glass production in this country, and there is now 
happily evidenced among the manufacturers a new spirit of co-operation 
combined with an enthusiasm for investigation and research, and a 
desire to adopt new methods and equipment involving the scientific 
control of manufacturing operations.—Nature, vol. 104, p. 299. 
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