Abstract
TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY Mr. J. A. Pease, the then president of the Board of Education, in introducing the Board of Education estimates in the House of Commons on May 13, 1915, announced the impending appointment of an Advisory Council for industrial research in Great Britain, to be specially entrusted with the supervision and encouragement of scientific research particularly in relation to industry, he laid special stress on the importance of providing for the training of the scientific and technical personnel. Already the early months of the War of 1914-18 had revealed the dangers and difficulties in which Great Britain was placed through the neglect of science by industry and the absence of an adequate scientific personnel. We had not merely to make the best use of the scientific men we then possessed, but also to provide a further supply in the future. The debates in the House of Commons on the proposals eventually issued by Mr. Pease's successor at the Board of Education, Mr. Arthur Henderson, in a White Paper (Cmd. 8005), as in the original statement, thoroughly endorsed the Government's proposal to deal with this problem as an integral part of a comprehensive improvement in our educational system. It was indeed originally proposed that the whole scheme should be supervised by the Board of Education, to which the expenditure of £1,000,000 over a period of five years would be entrusted on the advice of the proposed Central Council of Commercial and Industrial Research.
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The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Nature 145, 726–730 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/145726a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/145726a0