Abstract
IN a recent statement made by Sir Ernest Simon before the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, some outstanding facts were given concerning research in the United States. The research unit of the Bell Telephone Company, for example, has some 5,000-6,000 research workers concentrated on the one problem of telephonic communication. In the United States there seemed to be little need to persuade the business man, hard-headed though he be, of the value of research. He is now so firmly convinced by the results of the last twenty years, hi peace and in war, of the necessity of research, that expenditure has risen to an astonishing figure, and, during the great depression, the research budget was the last to be cut. In 1940, according to an official report, industry was maintaining some 2,200 laboratories with a research staff of 70,000, at an annual cost of three hundred million dollars. Sir Ernest wondered what the expenditure is in Great Britain ; he doubted whether it was £4,000,000, yet it was to be noted that the United States population was only three times greater than ours. Per head he estimated that the United States were spending five times as much as we spend on university and industrial research. The results were significant. America now leads hi hydrocarbon research, the world order being now : United States first, Germany second, Russia third and Great Britain fourth. Yet coal is our only special large-scale natural resource, and success in the difficult post-war period in exporting enough to pay for our essential imports will depend to a substantial extent on the most scientific treatment of our coal in order to get from it the maximum value.
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Research in the United States. Nature 151, 693 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/151693a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/151693a0