is afforded by the development of wireless telegraphy. The now familiar electric waves, transmitted by the ether with the velocity of light, were foreshadowed by Faraday and Henry and definitely made known by the mathematical investigations of Maxwell about the middle of the nineteenth century. Nearly forty years later Hertz, deliberately following Maxwell's lead, produced and detected these waves experimentally. Crookes foresaw their possible utilization for wireless telegraphy, which was accomplished over short distances by Lodge in 1894, and applied on a commercial scale by Marconi in 1896. The wireless telephone was a later development of the pioneer work of Maxwell and Hertz, reënforced by much additional physical research on electric discharges in vacuum tubes and other laboratory phenomena. Similarly the invention of the telephone goes back to the principles of magneticelectric induction discovered by Faraday; the anti-toxin treatment of disease grew out of Pasteur's investigations of bacteria, which resulted in their turn from his studies of the nature of certain crystals, made for the sole purpose of advancing knowledge; the airplane had its origin in Langley's researches on the resistance of the air to moving bodies. Analyze any invention, and it will be found that it was rendered possible by the work of men concerned only with the advancement of sciHow clearly this is appreciated by the chief leaders of industry is best expressed in the words of Carty, from his presidential address to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1916. ence. "It was Michael Faraday, one of the greatest of the workers in pure science, who in the last century discovered the principle of the dynamo electric machine. Without a knowledge of this principle discovered by Faraday the whole art of electrical engineering as we know it today could not exist and civilization would have been deprived of those inestimable benefits which have resulted from the work of the members of this Institute. "Not only Faraday in England, but Joseph Henry in our own country and scores of other workers in pure science have laid the foundations upon which the electrical engineer has reared such a magnificent structure. "What is true of the electrical art is also true of all the other arts and applied sciences. They are all based upon fundamental discoveries made by workers in pure science, who were seeking only to discover the laws of nature and extend the realm of human knowledge. "By every means in our power, therefore, let us show our appreciation of pure science and let us forward the work of the pure scientists, for they are the advance guard of civilization. They point the way which we must follow. Let us arouse the people of our country to the wonderful possibilities of scientific discovery and to the responsibility to support it which rests upon them and I am sure that they will respond generously and effectively." In each of the illustrations we have cited, and in many others like them, three elements, fundamentally important to the welfare of the United States, should be recognized. It is clear that a nation anxious to reduce the cost of living and unwilling to give place in the industrial world to better informed rivals must adopt every feasible means of promoting research in the industries. It is equally clear that so long as the security of the world is menaced by unscrupulous military powers, research methods must be effectively utilized in perfecting the means of national defense. But more fundamental still is the prime necessity, clearly appreciated and strongly emphasized by the far-sighted leaders of American industry, of promoting research in all branches of science, without thought of any industrial application, for the sake of advancing knowledge. As Sir Joseph Thomson has recently said, it is only in this way that the greatest advances are made. The pioneers of industrial research are those who seize and apply the discoveries of men of science, by whom new territories are opened and explored. Without the knowledge derived from such explorations, the investigator bent upon immediate industrial advantage could make little progress. Our place in the industrial world, the advance of our commerce, the health of our people, the output of our farms, the conditions under which the great majority of our population must labor, and the security of the nation will thus depend, in large and increasing measure, on the attention we devote to the promotion of scientific and industrial research. The purpose of this book is therefore to describe the part played by science in the war with special reference to the future development and utilization of research on a scale commensurate with the needs of the United States. |