ASSISTING INDUSTRY

Evening Star, Issue 21667, 12 March 1934, Page 10

ASSISTING INDUSTRY

RESEARCH WCRK many achievements - Through a mellowed brick building in Old ° Queen street. Westminster, there flows every year more than halt a million pounds of the taxpayers money. , It is the headquarters ol the Depaitment of Scientific and Industrial Kesearch—that vigorous war-baby which has its finger in so many pies, writes a correspondent in the ‘ Morning 1 ost. The far-flung activities of the Department passes the taxpayers’ money out to help the mills of Lancashire am Yorkshire, the shipbuilding yards ol Glasgow and the Tyne, and the steelworks of Sheffield. Its interests range from improved .wireless valves to “ cleaner ” coal—but always the emphasis is on improvement. _ . What, then, . are the nation s dividends on this half a million a year expenditure? Ho true balance-sheet is possible, but an interim statement, intended to reassure doubting shareholders, would certainly include the following:—

The promise of a £1,840,000 a yeax saving to the British steel industry through the more economical use ot coal. ~ A return of £1,000,000 a year to the electrical industry on £BO,OOO expendiA saving to shipowners, estimated at a minimum of £1,000,000* a year, through improvements in the design ol hulls and propellers. Then, to appeal to other tastes, the statement might add that the shaieholders’ shoes are being made to tit better; that their tennis trousers will in future stay permanently • white, and that the enamel of their baths will be less likely to peel off. ’ REDUCING WASTE.

How are these dividends, great and small, achieved? It is obvious that they are of a very different kind from the*more spectacular achievements with which scientists are rightly credited—the development of the modern electric sign industry from the discovery ot a rare gas in the atmosphere, of the°whole of wireless from a single surprising experiment in a laboratory, and of television from the discovery that light and shade can be translated into a changing electric current. The answer—which involves the whole reason for the Research Department’s existence—is that the .“ pure scientists, who make the relatively lew discoveries which can be genuinely described as new, are neither limited by the requirements ol industry nor partculariy interested in the practical application of their work. ... Thi “ pure ” scientist is needed to light the torch—the industrial scientist to carry' it forward. But because England enjoyed, . until 1914. a position of industrial supremacy, the second process was left to chance and individual enterprise. England" had not yet learnt to fake competitors seriously. It was onlv war-time emergency which led, in 1915, to the formation- of the Committee of the Privy Council for Scientific and Industrial .Research—'the parent tree from which the department of the same name rapidly sprouted. The war-time problem of output at all costs had been replaced by the peace-time problem of our trade balance, hut the method of attack is the same—the application of science to improve production and'reduce waste. - Taking this wide outlook, the first fact which stands out from the nation s balance-sheet is that Britain annually Speuds more than £350,000,000 on imports of food, drink, and tobacco. Ihe reduction of this debit balance through the stimulation of home production is, in the main, the care of a peghbouring establishment in’ Whitehall. But it isf the duty of the department, to reduce waste—through the Food Invesfgation Board. food preservation •

With this object, the board conducts experiments on the behaviour or fruit and meat in laboratories at, Cambridge and East Mailing. Its scientists have made many unexpected discoveries, such as the fact that apples can be poisoned by their own ‘‘ breath. But one of the ,most important tor the future is that apples, and probably other fruit, can he “ put tb sleep tor as long as a year in a so-called gas store,” arid 'marketed in perfect, condition when they would otherwise be out of season. . , , Thjs discovery and parade] advances in cold storage are estimated to have put alreadv an extra £IOO,OOO a year Into the pockets of home producers, and as the numbers of “ gas stores are rapid!v growing this figure is likely to be very largely increased. The board has also presented the fishing industry with a method of rapid freezing, which will preserve perfectly the fresh “ tang ” of fish for months in cold storage, and Empire meat producers have been told how to transport meat which has only been “chilled,” and not “frozen,’ from Australia and Xew. Zealand to England. . , , , But, in the mam. the research department is concerned with the credit side of the national balance-sheet—-that is, with productive industry. It tells shipowners how they may modernise out-of-date ships, railway companies how the wind-resistance of their trains may b© reduced, buildei'S how houses may be made warmer, and shoe manufacturers how patent _ leather may be prevented from cracking. ■ It does some of these tnmgs through its own laboratories, others through grants to a group of nineteen research associations, each devoted to a single industry and financed by subscriptions from individual fims. these two groups of laboratories cover between them practically every industry of importance in the country. The researches of trie Fuel Research Board on processes such as hydrogenation and low-temperature carbonisation, designed to get the most out of coal, are comparatively familiar, hut it is not generally realised how' much' is being done to help the more normal activities of the coal industry. Important advances have been made in methods of washing coal before transport in order to remove dirt and other materials of no heating :jow< i . Although gnost British coal is comparatively clean, it is a fact that at mine collieries one out of every twelve railway trucks has, in effect, been used to transport only dirt. But, even more important for the future, is the complete classification which is being made of the coal from each of the hundreds of seams, which are either worked or are ever likely to be worked, in the whole of Britain. The purpose of this survey is to ensure that the users of coal, both at home and abroad, shall be able to obtain supplies of the type which most exactly suits their needs. It should also make for uniformity of supply, which inquiry has shown is for many industrial purposes a more serious factor than quality, or even cost. .Finally, a word in defence of the fuel research worker. Everything points to’the'fact that Britain’s hundred thousand million tons coal reserves will out-

last the world’s supply of oil. Sooner or later coal must come back into its own. In tee meantime it is bad economics, and always will be, • to use a raw material wasteful!,y.