The works manager knows that for success the temperature at some point in a complicated process must be kept within narrow limits, whereas during other operations large variations of tem perature have little effect. Samples which fail come to the works laboratory for examination, and inquiry shows that the temper ature limits at this critical stage have been exceeded. Such an occurrence naturally leads a competent chemist to inquire what is the nature of the action which takes place at this critical tempera ture ; how does the product produced, when the temperature limits are over-stepped, differ from the proper article? This inquiry may lead to a long and intricate investigation with results of the utmost importance to the firm. It may be found, for example, that a slight change in the composition of the material will render the close limits unnecessary and will reduce greatly the care and atten tion required for the manufacture. The problem has become one for industrial research, not merely for routine testing, and the consequences of that research have proved to be simplification of manufacture and cheapening of the product.
In Great Britain nearly 50,000,000 people must be supplied with food, mostly brought from beyond the seas, and this food must be paid for with the products of industry at home, by the goods man ufactured in great part from materials purchased from abroad but dependent on the coal and iron of English mines and by the knowledge and skill of English manufacturers. It is of the utmost importance that the high quality of those goods should be main tained, the methods of their manufacture improved and the costs of production reduced. In the words of a recent report : "Scien tific and industrial research is an essential factor in the national effort on which the continued maintenance of our present popula tion unquestionably depends." And these words, though used here for England, apply to the other nations of the world as well.
And now we come to consider the means taken to promote in dustrial research and its present position and work in various lands.
These means are various ; the state in a number of instances has organized research laboratories devoted mainly to industrial problems; large private firms have established similar laboratories under their own control, while attempts have been made by the formation of research associations to combine the efforts of a number of firms concerned in the same industry. The universities, too, and technical colleges have aided the endeavour by organizing more fully the teaching of science and giving facilities for the training of research workers.
outcome of the war of 1870. Established in two divisions, the one devoted to pure science, the other to its applications, its founders realised the close interdependence of the two, and while the first division dealt to a large extent in questions bearing on the funda mental units and standards of measurement whether in heat, elec tricity, light or any other branch of physics, the second division was concerned mostly in the application of the principles which resulted from these investigations to the advancement of German industry and manufacture.
At the same time technical colleges were established in a number of centres; of these, perhaps the colleges at Charlottenburg and Darmstadt were the most important, and from their professors and students came a stream of scientific facts and discoveries, many of great value to industry, which were eagerly seized upon and assimilated by men at the head of great industrial concerns who had realised that science was the foundation of their success.
In their own factories these men were no less active and far seeing. Charlottenburg and the Materials Priifungs Amt at Gross Lichterfelde which developed from it taught the engineer and the metallurgist the value of research. Its professors devised delicate instruments for use in investigating the properties of materials; the Martens Extensometer is an example. Sorby, of Sheffield, in 1864 was the first to investigate the structure of metals and alloys by the aid of the microscope, but his work was not pursued until, at a later date, Osmond in France and Martens in Germany took up the study independently and showed its importance to the industrialist.
In electrical science, also, the work of the Reichsanstalt had a marked effect and the great electrical firms—the Allgemeine Elec tricitats Gesellschaft, Siemens and Halske and others—established research laboratories to develop for their own purposes and private benefit the results of scientific investigations.
Nor should the great chemical firms be forgotten. Perkin, in England, was the founder of the modern dye industry, but it was in Germany that this teaching first bore practical results. The Badische Anilin Fabric and other similar works were founded and huge sums were spent in developing new methods and inventing new dyes. Artificial indigo took the place of the natural pro duct, with the inevitable result to the Indian industry. Germany had learned the lesson, and industrial research promised, unless other countries woke up, to give her the leading position among the manufacturing nations of the world.