Industrial Research

Great Britain.

In England, until towards the end of the 19th century, the danger was hardly appreciated. At meetings of the British Association and elsewhere Sir 0. Lodge and others had pointed out the value of the Reichsanstalt to Germany, the need that England should have a similar institution. In 19oo the Na tional Physical Laboratory began in a small way—the expendi ture during the first year was £5,479—in the old buildings of the Kew Observatory at Richmond. In 1901 the work was transferred to Bushy House, Teddington, with a staff of eight scientific assist ants and six attendants in addition to the director. The scientific character of its work was secured by placing the ultimate control in the hands of the Royal Society, while a close connection with industry was maintained by having representatives of the great engineering societies on its governing body. The laboratory, at the time the only public institution in the country devoted to the ap plication of science to industry—to industrial research—grew slowly and prospered for the next 12 or 14 years, and when the World War came, it was in a position to be of material service to the country.

About the same time, the British Engineering Standards Com mittee was founded, chiefly at the instance of Sir John Wolfe Barry, who had realised the loss caused by the infinite number of standards used by engineers and the advantages to be gained by a system based on accurate measurement and a careful investiga tion of the properties of the materials employed in constructures. In this work the National Physical Laboratory co-operated very fully. Meanwhile at an earlier date industrial research of impor tance had gone on in a few laboratories attached to firms in Shef field and elsewhere. The work of Sorby on the micrographic struc ture of metals has already been referred to and at a later date Roberts Austen of the Mint utilized this method of inquiry in his investigation of a broken rail which had led to a serious accident on the Great Northern Railway. Manganese steel was produced from the laboratory of Sir Robert Hadfield in 1882 as an outcome of a scientific inquiry into the properties of alloys; many results of high value have since come from the same source.

France.

In France, work of value was being done in various places; the Laboratoire d'Essais and the Laboratoire Central d'Electricite both contributed. The metallurgical work of Osmond and Le Chatellier was of marked importance, while the discovery of the special properties of Invar—an alloy of nickel steel—by Gulleaume has proved of value in many industries.

International Standards.

One of the marked consequences of industrial research has been the realisation of the importance of international standards of measurement, and as a result inter national co-operation between the standardizing laboratories in various countries and other bodies concerned with standards has become necessary. From this need arose the Bureau International

des Poids et Mesures at Sevres and various international associa tions such as the International Electrotechnical Association or the Association for Testing Material. In 1908 the British Government summoned an International Congress in London at which the system of electrical units, now universal throughout the world, was adopted.

War Problems.

This is not the place to give any account of the influence of science on war; experience showed it to be vital and the phrase that Science won the War, interpreted to mean that without science the War would have been lost, only expresses the truth. In the Allied countries on both sides of the Atlantic, men and women were at work solving problems of vital impor tance. Facilities for research were open to them, funds undreamed of in peace time were at their disposal, and the results of their endeavours contributed to a more general acceptance of the view that in peace time industry would benefit in the same way from scientific inquiries wisely guided and pursued.

Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.—And so, in Great Britain as elsewhere, a movement was started to organize in some more definite way the connection between science and industry. The establishment of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research was the outcome of this movement. This was announced by Lord Crewe, Lord President of the Council, at the end of 1916 in reply to a deputation from the Joint Board of Scientific Societies headed by Sir Joseph J. Thomson, P.R.S. An advisory council of scientific men was established and the sum of ir,000,000 was placed at the disposal of the department to be used in the application of science to industry.

The financial responsibility for the National Physical Labora tory, with a staff which before the end of the War had grown to 600, was transferred to the department ; boards were set up for fuel research, food investigation, building research and various other subjects, while a number of co-ordinating bodies were estab lished to deal with researches of importance to Government de partments, especially those bearing on industry. These researches are carried on either in special laboratories or at one or other of the national laboratories ; the Geological Survey and Museum be came one of the activities of the new department, which thus undertook the task of guiding and supervising the various official agencies for making the advances of science of service to national progress. The department also aids the work of the Aeronautical Research Committee which—at first as the advisory committee for aeronautics—has contributed in no small degree to the science of aviation.