Abstract
INVENTION forms the natural link between physics, chemistry, and engineering, and every advance in one or-other of these produces a reflex action on the other. For example, a discovery in physics which increases accuracy of measurement by providing an indicator more sensitive than any previously known, is soon embodied in an engineering instrument carefully designed and manufactured for sale at a price which makes it available to every physicist for use in further research. Thus modern research in physics and chemistry is carried out with accurate apparatus which would be available only at a prohibitive price if it had been made for the particular research alone. The assemblage of apparatus used in a modern research is sometimes like an engineering installation, and is in marked contrast with the cruder, home-made apparatus, designed ad hoc, which was common a generation ago.
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HENDERSON, J. Invention as a Link in Scientific and Economic Progress1. Nature 120, 588–591 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/120588a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/120588a0