SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3992, 16 September 1930, Page 69

SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.

REVIEW OF PAST YEAR. WELLINGTON, September 9. Covering 100 pages, the annual report of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, tabled in the House to-day. reviews a wide field of activity. In a preface to the divisional reports it is stated that the department has been functioning for a little over three years, and in the research activities which it has undertaken it is emerging from the pioneering stage. Progress to those actively engaged has seemed slow, yet considering the scale of the efforts a retrospect shows that very’ general progress has been made in a number of directions, and along such lines as are of material use to dustrics. Moreover, through contact with research organisations overseas, interchange of workers, and the establishment of imperial ■agricultural research bureaux, a wider outlook of research has developed, and a considerable measure of Imperial unity has been attained in organisation. Every effort has been made to facilitate team work, and yet to take advantage of the enthusiasm and initiative of the individual worker, the mainspring of all successful endeavour in science. The main result of the department’s activities has been the tendency to replace the speculative point of view of many questions by the more solid basis of facts as obtained by survey or experiment, so that we can now build steadily on the foundation laid. A review shows that the nature of the advances made has been real rather than striking, and this is as might be expected when progress is attempted on organised lines. There is a tendency to gauge results by pounds, shillings, and pence, and although this method is distasteful to the scientific worker, and is not always a real criterion of progress, which is more truly’ measured by advance in conception and ideas, it appears necessary to take stock, even after the relatively short period of activity of the department, and review the progress attempted and made in the investigations which have been inaugurated. The main new activities during the year have been the development of the Imof interested parties in this and bthci' regards has proved satisfactory.