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    Pure Science with a Practical Aim: The Meanings of Fundamental Research in Britain, circa19161950

    Author(s): By Sabine ClarkeReviewed work(s):Source: Isis, Vol. 101, No. 2 (June 2010), pp. 285-311Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/653094 .

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    Pure Science with a Practical Aim

    The Meanings of Fundamental Research inBritain, circa 19161950

    By Sabine Clarke*

    ABSTRACT

    Historians tell us that the term fundamental research entered the discourse of science inthe interwar period as a synonym for pure science and that both terms referred to workconcerned with the search for knowledge, without thought of application. The aim of thispaper is to show that when the expression fundamental research was used in Britainduring and after World War I, it had a particular status that was not equivalent to purescience. In the annual reports of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research(DSIR) fundamental research was endowed with multiple meanings, including workthat was orientated towards some practical goal. The fluidity of the meaning of funda-mental research in the reports of the DSIR can be understood as a strategy; fundamentalresearch was a rhetorical term that served to persuade more than one audience of the

    legitimacy of the DSIR and its policies.

    HISTORIANS AND SOCIOLOGISTS of science have urged us to consider the con-

    tingent nature of the meanings of the expressions science and technology, and the

    rhetorical and ideological use of these terms. The terms fundamental research and basic

    research, however, have largely been treated as fixed concepts in histories of twentieth-

    century science. Some recent literature has attempted to locate the first use of these

    expressions in the period between 1930 and 1950, and has considered the reasons for their

    uptake by commentators on science during the course of the twentieth century. Funda-mental research and basic research are said to have came into widespread use as

    alternatives to the older expression pure science. It is claimed that when used by

    scientists in the twentieth century, fundamental research, basic research, and pure

    * Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford, 45-47 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PE,United Kingdom.

    I would like to thank David Edgerton, Waqar Zaidi, and the anonymous referees of Isis for the extremelyhelpful comments that were given on various drafts of this article.

    Isis, 2010, 101:285311

    2010 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.

    0021-1753/2010/1012-001$10.00

    285

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    science referred to the same thingwork concerned with the acquisition of scientific

    knowledge, without thought of application.1

    This paper is concerned with the use of the expression fundamental research in

    Britain by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), created in 1916.

    The term fundamental research had not been previously used by government bodies forresearch in Britain, such as the Development Commission or the Medical Research

    Committee, and it is difficult to know for certain where the expression had come from.

    One thing is certain, however; the term had been in use from an earlier period than that

    identified by Ronald Kline who suggests that discomfort with some of the connotations of

    the term pure science led to the introduction of the term fundamental research during

    the 1930s by industrial researchers in America. The journal Science used the phrases

    fundamental research and fundamental science in articles on the organization and

    funding of agricultural science in the United States as early as 1895.2

    In Britain, fundamental research was a term that came into common use as part of a

    discourse that accompanied the creation of new state-funded research bodies, beginning

    with the DSIR. This discourse was not concerned with characterizations of the nature of

    science, but was concerned specifically with defining the nature of research as this activity

    increasingly became the focus of attention by the state and industry. This paper considers

    the rhetorical nature of this research discourse as expressed in the official publications of

    the DSIR. This discourse generally avoided invoking the ideal of pure science. Instead, the

    DSIR spoke of the need to support fundamental research, and did not treat that research

    as equivalent to pure science as scholars have claimed.

    In its focus on language this paper is a contribution to a body of scholarship that has

    sought to investigate the strategies employed in scientific discourse to construct and

    disseminate knowledge claims, demarcate science from non-science, and assert the cul-

    tural value of science. Literature of the last type, focused on Britain in the first half of the

    twentieth century, has often been informed by the notion of public science proposed by

    Frank Turner; he has encouraged scholars to consider proclamations on the nature of

    science as a rhetoric concerned with gaining such things as financial support and policy

    influence for scientists.3 In addition, historians of medicine have produced increasingly

    1 Otto Mayr, The Science-Technology Relationship as a Historiographical Problem, Technology andCulture, 1976, 17:663672; Thomas Gieryn, Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists, American Sociological Review, 1983,48:781795; Walter G. Vincenti and David Bloor, Boundaries, Contingencies and Rigor: Thoughts on Math-

    ematics Prompted by a Case Study in Transonic Aerodynamics, Social Studies of Science, 2003, 33:469507,p. 488; and Peter Dear, What is the History of Science the History Of? Early Modern Roots of the Ideology ofModern Science, Isis, 2005, 96:390406. On the terms fundamental research and basic research seeRonald Kline, Construing Technology as Applied Science: Public Rhetoric of Scientists and Engineers inthe United States, 18801945, Isis, 1995, 86:194221, pp. 216 and 217; Benot Godin, Measuring Science:Is There Basic Research Without Statistics? Social Science Information, 2003, 42:5790; and Jane Calvert,Whats Special about Basic Research? Science, Technology and Human Values, 2006, 31:199220. In fact,Calvert claims that Kline states that basic research replaced the term pure science in public proclamationsof industrial researchers during the 1930s, when his statement was about the term fundamental research. Godinwrites, between 1930 and 1945 then, numerous labels were used for more or less the same concept: pure,fundamental, background and basic: Godin, Measuring Science, p. 62.

    2 Kline relates how Frank Jewett complained to Vannevar Bush in 1945 that the term pure science impliedthat more applied kinds of work done by industrial researchers were impure: Kline, Construing Technology

    as Applied Science, p. 217. For an example of Science using fundamental research and fundamentalscience, see J. C. Arthur, Development of Vegetable Physiology, Science, 1895, 2:360373.3 On studies of strategies in scientific discourse see, for example, Steven Yearley, Textual Persuasion: The

    Role of Social Accounting in the Construction of Scientific Arguments, Philosophy of the Social Sciences,1981, 11:409435; G. Nigel Gilbert and Michael Mulkay, Opening Pandoras Box: A Sociological Analysis of

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    fine-grained analyses of the rhetorical aspects of declarations about the relationship

    between the laboratory sciences and clinical practice around the time of World War I. This

    work has included examination of ways in which this rhetoric could embody broader

    anxieties about the state of the nation. It has also examined how rhetoric that claimed

    opposition or demarcation between science and the clinic was often belied by theexistence of close working relationships between scientists and doctors in medical

    schools.4 In a similar vein, this paper shows that the ideal of pure science promoted by

    public scientists around the time of World War I exercised very little influence on the

    character of policies that were being developed for the funding and organization of

    research. The fact that the DSIR did not claim a unidirectional flow of knowledge from

    pure science to applied science gives credence to the view recently expressed by David

    Edgerton in a discussion of the linear model; he warned that we should be careful of

    assuming that some supposed guiding principles of twentieth-century science policy were

    actually promulgated by actors in the past.5 A close examination of the texts of the DSIR

    reveals that actors had more nuanced understandings of the interplay between research and

    practice than they sometimes have been credited for, and that they also knew the

    difference between the rhetoric of official documents and journals, and the nature of

    scientific work in practice.

    In this paper the annual reports of the DSIR are shown to be a key site for the production

    of a public rhetoric concerned with the status of this new department, state-science-

    industry relations, and the political economy of research in Britain. Faced with a poten-

    tially skeptical, even hostile, reception from industrialists and some quarters of the

    scientific community, the rhetoric discerned in the annual reports of the DSIR had the goal

    of persuading readers that public funding of research was desirable, that industry should

    invest in research, and that some organization of science by government was necessary.

    This rhetoric hinged on particular definitions of the term fundamental research. In the

    annual reports of the DSIR the term fundamental research had a mutable quality. Rather

    than attempting to distill a more stable meaning, I will argue in this paper that multiple

    Scientists Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984); Bruno Latour, Science in Action (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1987); Anne Holmquest, The Rhetorical Strategy of Boundary-Work, Argumen-tation, 1990, 4:235258; and Charles Alan Taylor, Defining Science: A Rhetoric of Demarcation (Madison:Univ. Wisconsin Press, 1996). On the notion of public science in Britain see Frank M. Turner, Public Sciencein Britain, 18801919, Isis, 1980, 71:589608; Richard R. Yeo, Scientific Method and the Rhetoric of Sciencein Britain, 18301917, in The Politics and Rhetoric of Scientific Method, ed. J. A. Schuster and Yeo (Dordrecht:D. Reidel, 1986), pp. 259297; and Andrew J. Hull, Food for Thought? The Relations Between the Royal

    Society Food Committees and Government, 19151919, Annals of Science, 2002, 59:263298.4 On the rhetoric of physicians in the interwar period see Christopher Lawrence, Still Incommunicable:

    Clinical Holists and Medical Knowledge in Interwar Britain, in Greater Than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine,19201950, ed. C. Lawrence and G. Weisz (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 94111; and especiallyDavid Cantor, The Name and the Word: Neo-Hippocratism and Language in Interwar Britain, in ReinventingHippocrates, ed. D. Cantor (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 280 301. For an increasingly nuancedunderstanding of the relationship between science and the clinic in practice see David Smith, The Use ofTeamwork in the Practical Management of Research in the Inter-War Period: John Boyd Orr at the RowettResearch Institute, Minerva, 1999, 37:259280; Andrew J. Hull, Teamwork, Clinical Research and theDevelopment of Scientific Medicines in Interwar Britain: The Glasgow School Revisited, Bulletin of theHistory of Medicine, 2007, 81:569593; and Steve Sturdy, Scientific Method for Medical Practitioners: TheCase Method of Teaching Pathology in Early Twentieth-Century Edinburgh, Bulletin of the History ofMedicine, 2007, 81:760792.

    5

    For the claim of a unidirectional flow of knowledge see Tom Wilkie, British Science and Politics Since 1945(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), p. 11. David Edgerton, The Linear Model Did Not Exist: Reflections on theHistory and Historiography of Science and Research in Industry in the Twentieth Century, in The Science-Industry Nexus: History, Policy, Implications, ed. Karl Grandin and Nina Wormbs (New York: Watson, 2004),pp. 3157.

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    meaning was important if we consider the function of the annual reports produced by new

    government bodies for research created in the first half of the twentieth century.6 The

    fluidity of meaning of fundamental research in the reports of the DSIR can be under-

    stood as a strategy; fundamental research was a rhetorical term that served to persuade

    more than one audience of the legitimacy of the DSIR and its policies. The DSIR statedthat it would support through grants the pure science activities of university scientists.

    Scientists were also to be reassured that the fundamental research the DSIR sought to

    promote at the laboratories of industrial research associations was work that examined the

    most in-depth, underlying, or indeed, fundamental issues; this was work that would

    contribute to scientific theory and lead to advances in knowledge. Importantly, this work

    was stated to be both scientifically important and practically useful, and the starting point

    for this fundamental research was the need to address a practical issue. Unlike the term

    pure science, the term fundamental research was flexible enough to convince readers

    associated with industry that researchers would not be receiving funds so that they might

    merely satisfy their scientific curiosity.Fundamental research was also defined at times as research into general issues, as

    distinguished from research that addressed discrete or more limited problems. Character-

    izing fundamental research as either broad, general, or as background research, was

    important for the negotiation of matters of political economy. General research explored

    issues common to a group of firms in a particular sector. It was contrasted with research

    into specific issues, the problems that were particular to an individual company. The DSIR

    stated that it would not be supporting the latter. In this way, the definition of fundamental

    research as research into general issues offered a route for state sponsorship of science that

    did not compromise the tenets of liberal political economy. While the DSIR investigated

    the broadest possible issues, it was left to private business to address the problems that

    arose in the context of its own local and particular needs. A similar rationale worked to

    justify the expenditure of funds on research by organizations such as the National Physical

    Laboratory (NPL) and the Food Investigation Board (FIB). These organizations were said

    to explore issues that were so widespread and important that no business or industrial

    sector in Britain could reasonably be expected to deal with them. The justification for

    government funding of bodies such as the NPL and FIB was that the fundamental research

    these organizations carried out dealt with issues of such widespread and general impor-

    tance to the prosperity of the nation that fundamental research was, in effect, national

    research. This research had, therefore, a strong claim on public funds.After World War I, the term fundamental research was used in the reports of other

    state bodies created in Britain to fund research such as the Medical Research Council, the

    Agricultural Research Council, and during the 1940s, the Colonial Research Committee.

    These bodies generally avoided invoking the concepts of pure and applied science. The

    meanings given in the reports of these government bodies to the expression fundamental

    research were not exactly those used by the DSIR, however. The meanings of this term

    were, to a degree, contingent; they were informed by the particular context in which the

    research bodies were established and operated.

    6 In other words, following an approach advocated by Quentin Skinner, the question the historian can posewhen reading the reports of the DSIR is not so much what do these reports mean? but rather, what was theDSIR doing? in writing these texts. See Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, 3 vols. (Cambridge: CambridgeUniv. Press, 2002), Vol. 1, p. 100.

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    THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH

    The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research was the product of Board of

    Education recommendations expressed in the Scheme for the Organisation and Devel-

    opment of Scientific and Industrial Research, published in 1915. The DSIR was created

    in 1916 as a government department staffed by civil service administrators, with anadvisory council of scientists who guided the department in making decisions about

    personnel for new projects, terms of employment for researchers, and projects suitable for

    funding. The chairman of the advisory council was Sir William McCormick and the

    secretary of the department was Frank Heath, both non-scientists drawn from the Board

    of Education.7 The department was not headed by a minister but was overseen by a

    committee of the Privy Council. Heath reported to the lord president who represented the

    DSIR in parliament.

    The main focus of the DSIR was to ensure an adequate supply of scientific researchers

    for industry in the long term and to encourage some sectors of British industry to spend

    more on research. It also established research programs in areas considered to be impor-tant for national prosperity, such as food and fuel. To achieve its aims the department

    offered grants to university workers, initiated a scheme by which industrial research

    associations could receive grants for cooperative research, and oversaw the running of

    national research boards and laboratories. In the immediate term there was also a call for

    projects of pressing wartime importance, such as the work of Professor Herbert Jackson

    on optical glasses previously only available from Germany.8

    Existing historical literature on the DSIR tends to be very narrow in focus, and is often

    concerned with discussions at the Board of Education immediately leading up to the

    creation of the department. There has been a tendency in some accounts to repeat

    uncritically the assertion that shortages of key imports with the outbreak of World War Iforced reluctant politicians and civil servants to recognize the deficiency of British

    science, and the backwardness of British industry, in comparison to that of Germany. In

    fact, while the war provided the opportunity to create new state machinery to fund and

    coordinate scientific research and scientific education, interest in supporting these objec-

    tives had long existed at the Board of Education and among some politicians and

    high-ranking civil servants, notably Christopher Addison and Lord Haldane. David Edgerton

    and Sally Horrocks have also shown the picture of absolute neglect of research by British

    industry to be misleading. British firms were conducting scientific research before World

    War I, notably the United Alkali Company, Cadbury, Noble, and Vickers, and it has

    proven difficult to substantiate the claim that British industry was far behind that ofGermany in its spending on research. The more general problem with many accounts of

    the DSIR has been a tendency by scholars to focus on making an assessment of its success

    7 Board of Education, Scheme for the Organisation and Development of Scientific and Industrial Research,Cd. 8005 (1915), British parliamentary paper (HMSO, London). The advisory council formed in May 1915consisted of Sir George Beilby (industrial chemist and chairman of the Royal Technical College, Glasgow),Raphael Meldola (industrial chemist and head of Finsbury Technical College), Richard Threlfall (industrialchemist), William Duddell (consulting engineer), J. A. McClellan (chair of experimental physics at UniversityCollege, Dublin), Bertram Hopkinson (engineer and professor of applied mechanics at University of Cambridge),

    and the mathematician and physicist, Lord Rayleigh. See Ian Varcoe, Scientists, Government and OrganisedResearch in Great Britain, 19141916: The Early History of the DSIR, Minerva, 1970, 8: 192216, p. 207.8 DSIR 2nd Annual Report, Cd. 7818 (19161917). Annual reports cited of the DSIR and other government

    organizations are command papers (Cd. or Cmd.) presented to the British Parliament, published by HMSO,London hereafter.

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    or failure that reflects the concerns of the particular writer, rather than focusing on any

    debates that occurred at the moment of the DSIRs establishment. In addition, evaluating

    the contribution of the DSIR to British science policy, or to state and science relations,

    misses the point that the DSIR was specifically concerned with research, not science per

    se. The significance of the department resides in its contribution to what can be called therise of research during the first half of the twentieth century. The challenge facing the

    department was the negotiation of greatly increased intervention in the organization of

    scientific research, and the negotiation of new areas of intervention by the state with

    respect to British industry. The DSIR looked for inspiration in a number of areas. Perhaps

    unsurprisingly, one of these was the development of industrial research laboratories in

    some large American firms. Less obvious, and certainly not acknowledged in the existing

    literature, was the attention the DSIR paid to the rise of government-sponsored agricul-

    tural research in America.9

    It is clear from the files and annual reports of the DSIR that the department faced

    problems in persuading British scientists and British industry that its establishment and its

    goals were necessary and legitimate. The situation of the DSIR was made particularly

    difficult by the hostile response to the formation of the department from a vocal lobby of

    scientists that expressed discontent in the pages ofNature, and directly to the department

    in letters. At the same time, the DSIR was concerned that industrial managers would need

    education and persuasion before they were willing to invest in cooperative research, and

    that British industry did not have a strong tradition of trade association. Also, spending of

    public funds on industrial research needed to be organized so as to avoid the accusation

    that the state was supporting work that should be paid for by business; state intervention

    in industrial affairs needed to be carefully delimited.

    Central to the purpose of the annual reports for the DSIR, therefore, was the need for

    this organization to legitimate its establishment and its mode of operation, and obtain the

    endorsement of scientists and industrialists. This need influenced the ways in which the

    department defined the research it wished to support in its public statements. It was

    important, for example, to describe research in the annual reports as an activity susceptible

    to some degree of organization. The DSIR made frequent use of the expression funda-

    mental research, and in order to understand fully the meanings of this term as used by the

    DSIR we need to consider in some detail how pure science was defined in this period.

    Here I am following Quentin Skinner who has suggested that in attempting to grasp the

    meanings of the texts of the past, we need to focus not merely on the particular text in

    which we are interested but on the prevailing conventions governing the treatment of the

    issues or themes with which the text is concerned.10

    Andrew Hull has shown that the creation of the DSIR prompted a fierce response from

    a lobby of scientists that included prominent figures such as Richard Gregory, the editor

    of Nature, and members of the National Union of Scientific Workers and the British

    9 Varcoe, Scientists, Government and Organised Research (cit. n. 7); Peter Alter, The Reluctant Patron:Science and the State in Britain, 1850 1920 (Oxford: Berg, 1987), pp. 203204; R. MacLeod and E. K.Andrews, The Origins of the DSIR: Reflections on Ideas and Men, 19151916, Public Administration, 1970,48:2345; D. E. H. Edgerton and S. M. Horrocks, British Industrial Research and Development Before 1945,

    Economic History Review, 1994, 47:213238; H. Frank Heath and A. L. Heatherington, Industrial Research andDevelopment in the UK; A Survey (London: Faber and Faber, 1946); David Edgerton, Science, Technology andthe British Industrial Decline, 18701970 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996). The DSIRs interest inAmerican Agriculture is expressed in DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), p. 28.

    10 Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics (cit. n. 6), p. 100.

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    Science Guild. In a number of books, and articles and editorials in Nature, this lobby

    mobilized a rhetoric intended to ensure that scientists in Britain retained control of the

    research agenda in the face of what was perceived as increasing control of research by the state.

    The fact that the DSIR was a body administered by non-scientists prompted the claim that

    scientific research was passing out of the hands of scientists into the hands of bureaucratsand industrialists, and this would lead to the dominance of applied problems. The response

    to this supposed threat to the autonomy and status of researchers was the promotion of

    pure science by public scientists such as Richard Gregory.11 Drawing on the claims of

    many scientists and laymen since the nineteenth century, this rhetoric referred to the ideal

    of pure science as the search for knowledge for its own sake, to work done without thought

    of any commercial or practical gain.12 While pure science was said to be work that was

    done without thought of application, public scientists around the time of World War I

    nonetheless claimed pure science was the essential prerequisite for applied science.

    In some cases, the rhetoric produced by British scientists around the time of World War

    I took the form of a denial that scientific knowledge could be independently produced by

    applied science. This view was summed up in 1917 by the physicist William Bragg:

    There is no applied science distinct from pure science. There are applications of pure

    science, that is all. This was a comment that relied heavily for inspiration on the often

    repeated remark by Thomas Henry Huxley: What people called Applied Science is

    nothing but the application of Pure Science to particular classes of problems. Huxley is

    arguably the most famous individual to have claimed that only pure science actually

    existed and that everything else was merely the application of this knowledge, although

    the same point was made by the American physicist Henry Rowland in his 1883 essay, A

    Plea for Pure Science.13 Braggs comment appeared in the book, Science and the Nation,

    a series of essays written by eminent British scientists on the relations between pure and

    applied science. The book was inspired, according to the introduction by Lord Moulton,

    by fears among scientists that there would be neglect of pure science with state recognition

    11 Andrew J. Hull, Passwords to Power: A Public Rationale for Expert Influence on Central GovernmentPolicy-Making: British Scientists and Economists, c. 19001925 (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Glasgow, 1994), pp.107115 and 8283. Hull uses the term public scientists as defined by Frank Turner. Turner referred to thoseindividuals who consciously attempt to persuade the public or influential sectors thereof that science bothsupports and nurtures broadly accepted social, political and religious goals and values, and that it is thereforeworthy of receiving public attention, encouragement, and financing. See Frank M. Turner, Public Science inBritain (cit. n. 3), p. 590.

    12 Robert F. Bud and Gerrylynn K. Roberts state that the teaching of science was increasingly divided intopure and applied from the 1870s onwards in England, with the Devonshire Commission playing animportant role in formally expressing what these categories might be: Science Versus Practice: Chemistry inVictorian Britain (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1984), pp. 140151. Similarly, Kline comments thatAmerican scientists did not regularly use the term pure science until the 1870s. In general, accounts tell us thatas the distinction between pure science and applied science was drawn up in the nineteenth century, purescience was constructed as university science. The pursuit of pure science was presented as morally improvingfor students, in part because it was not inspired by the search for profit. See Ronald Kline, ConstruingTechnology as Applied Science (cit. n. 1), p. 199; and Michael Aaron Dennis, Accounting for Research:New Histories of Corporate Laboratories and the Social History of American Science, Social Studies of Science,1987, 17:479518. On the rise of the idea of pure science as work done for its own sake see George H. Daniels,The Pure-Science Ideal and Democratic Culture, Science, 1967, 159:16991705.

    13 William Bragg, Physical Research and the Way of Its Application, in Science and the Nation, ed. A. C.

    Seward (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1917), pp. 2448, on p. 39; and T. H. Huxley, Science andCulture, Collected Essays (London: MacMillan, 1893). This particular remark of Huxleys appears at thebeginning of Science and the Nation (p. 155), as well as in the text of the first annual report of the DSIR(19151916). Ronald Kline quotes Rowlands as saying, to have the applications of science, the science itselfmust exist: Kline, Construing Technology as Applied Science (cit. n. 1), p. 199.

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    of the need to fund industrial research. The book made it plain to the reader that pure

    science was essentially the driving force behind industrial prosperity and the better-

    ment of the race. The essayists claimed that invention resulted from the application of

    discoveries in pure science, and illustrated this point with examples of famous scientific

    discoveries such as x-rays.14

    A similar device was used by Gregory in his book of 1916, Discovery or The Spirit and

    Service of Science; Gregory listed seven inventions that had been voted by the readers of

    the American periodical Popular Mechanics as the seven wonders of the modern world,

    namely wireless telegraphy, the telephone, the airplane, radium, antiseptics and antitoxins,

    spectrum analysis, and x-rays. Gregory then stated, each one of these things had its

    foundations in purely scientific work and was not the result of deliberate intention to make

    something of service to humanity. He proceeded to take each invention in turn and chart

    its origins in pure science.15

    The claim was that pure science was an activity that should not be directed to meet

    specific practical goals, but fortuitous discoveries in pure science meant it was this activity

    that was the origin of useful invention. The defense of pure science as the undirected quest

    for knowledge was an attempt to preserve the autonomy of scientific researchers and

    ensure that research did not just become an activity that worked towards goals established

    by the state or industry. When Gregory or Bragg made their case for pure science their

    goal was to ensure the professional standing of researchers in the light of the perceived

    threat presented by the DSIR.

    PURE SCIENCE IN THE REPORTS OF THE DSIR

    During the early years of its existence the DSIR made a number of allusions to the

    necessity of maintaining support for pure science that might at first glance appear to be a

    thorough endorsement of the claims of the public science lobby of Gregory and others.

    Reference to pure science was made in the context of DSIR discussion of the individual

    grants it issued to university scientists. In its reports the DSIR described the universities

    as the natural homes of work in pure science, and attempted to assure the reader that the

    funds it offered would not mean university research would be orientated solely towards

    applied science as claimed by the public science lobby. The remarks made by the DSIR

    indicate that it was aware that its work was under scrutiny and that some scientists had

    made fierce criticisms of the form in which it had been instituted, as well as its goals. It

    was important that the DSIR define itself in ways that its scientific audience would

    endorse or it might forfeit the support of this particular group. The DSIR used a strategy

    of championing the ideal of pure science; this strategy included explicit reference to works

    produced by leading members of the lobby that had most forcefully rejected the DSIR on

    its formation.16 The DSIR repeated the claim of Gregory that useful inventions were the

    result of chance discoveries in pure science, and emphasized in their fourth report that the

    state cannot, and must not, attempt to organize pure science.17

    14 Seward, ed., Science and the Nation, pp. viii, vi (quotations), 26, and 39.15 Wireless telegraphy has its origin in the work of Clerk Maxwell and Hertz; the telephone depends upon

    the principles of magneto-electric induction discovered by Faraday; Langleys investigations of the resistance ofthe air to moving bodies led him to construct the first working model of an aeroplane: Richard A. Gregory,Discovery or The Spirit and Service of Science (London: MacMillan, 1916), p. 235.

    16 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), pp. 11 and 15.17 Professor R. A. Gregory has shown conclusively that each one of the modern practical applications of

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    While on the one hand the DSIR worked hard to indicate consensus with the prevailing

    rhetoric on the primacy of pure science, more detailed descriptions of how the DSIR

    intended to organize Britains scientific resources tended to obscure, and even negate, this

    apparent agreement. One issue noted by the DSIR was the difficulty in practice of trying

    to categorize scientific work as either pure or applied. Until 1922, the DSIR classified theuniversity grants it issued to researchers as pure or applied science with the majority of

    DSIR grants said to be falling within the realm of pure science. A brief explanation by the

    department of the rationale in operation when distinguishing between the two categories

    of science, however, suggests that the term pure science indicated a researcher working

    in a department of pure science, usually chemistry or physics. Accordingly, a grant labeled

    applied science referred to work undertaken in what was often called a technological

    department, including engineering, metallurgy, mining, brewing, and economic botany,

    usually at a redbrick university. The label of pure or applied science was not necessarily

    descriptive of the actual degree of practical relevance of the work undertaken.18 The DSIR

    stated that work in a field such as engineering, which was not defined as a field of pure

    science, could still make a contribution to scientific knowledge: The method of classi-

    fying researchers as pure and applied calls for a word of comment. In some cases a

    research which is primarily one in pure science may lead to results which can be applied

    to economic or industrial problems. On the other hand a research in an engineering subject

    may be of a fundamental character and unlikely to lead directly to results of immediate

    commercial value, though classified as applied.19 A remark of this kind confused the

    distinction between pure and applied science that was upheld by Gregory and others, and

    suggested that scientific knowledge could be derived from work in applied science. The

    conclusion finally arrived at by the DSIR was that attempts to distinguish between pure

    and applied science were misconceived.20 After 1922, grants were classified according to

    the subject area in which the work sponsored was considered to fall, with the vast majority

    falling in the field of chemistry.

    If in its public proclamations the DSIR felt pressure to demonstrate its support for pure

    science in the university by showing that the larger proportion of its grants could be

    considered to fall within this category, that pressure did not translate into criteria for

    determining whether or not an individual received a grant. Decisions as to the funding of

    university researchers did not necessarily reside in a consideration of whether their work

    was pure or applied, or even in a consideration of the works subject. It would be wrong,

    for example, to assume that the DSIR issued grants for projects according to their potential

    relevance to industrial problems.21 The criteria that were used in the allocation of

    studentships and fellowships were summed up in the third annual report of 1918: Inmaking these awards to students we have been guided primarily by our knowledge of the

    quality of the research work undertaken by the Professor or Head of the Department who

    recommends the student, by the opportunities which he has for engaging in research work,

    science, from wireless telegraphy to antitoxins, had its foundations in purely scientific work, and was not theresult of deliberate intention to make something of service to humanity: DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336(19151916), pp. 3334. For the DSIRs emphasis that the state must not organize pure science see DSIR 4thAnnual Report, Cmd. 320 (19181919), p. 13.

    18 DSIR 4th Annual Report, Cmd. 320 (19181919). On the difficulty of trying to categorize scientific work

    see DSIR 17/81, 10/4/18, p. 73, National Archives, London.19 DSIR 4th Annual Report, Cmd. 320 (19181919), p. 73.20 Ibid.21 A grant was given to Karl Pearson in 19181919 for work on statistics and eugenics: DSIR 4th Annual

    Report, Cmd. 320 (19181919), p. 74.

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    and by his personal recommendation of the student as one who shows promise of

    becoming a competent research worker after a suitable training.22

    The concern was to create greater numbers of individuals who had been trained in the

    methods of research; the most important criteria were aptitude for research shown by the

    researcher, and the quality of the training they would receive. The DSIR believed its roleas a body that organized science for the benefit of the country meant it had a duty to

    consider the provision of scientific manpower for the future. If industry, for example, was

    to make good use of scientists then there needed to be an adequate supply, and the best

    preparation for these workers was training in research methods.23

    Elsewhere in its reports the DSIR made comments that undermined its erstwhile

    promotion of the ideal of pure science as the undirected search for knowledge for its own

    sake. The DSIR was charged with the organization of the scientific resources of the nation

    and had a stated goal of bringing science and industry into a closer relationship. Recon-

    ciling the need to ensure that industry benefited from Britains scientific resources with the

    need to ensure the cooperation of scientists was considered potentially difficult. One issue

    was summarized in 1916 as being a question of how to establish a connection between

    individual manufacturers and a University in a manner which will bring the advanced

    student, the University organization and the individual firm into co-operation for research

    without hampering the academic freedom of the University professor or endangering the

    property in any results which may belong to the manufacturer.24

    The view was expressed that greater cooperation between science and industry could be

    achieved if university departments concerned with fields such as engineering, mining, or

    metallurgy, made efforts to assist industries with the research needed for the solution of

    particular problems facing them. The problems that faced manufacturing would, at times,

    be the inspiration for research. This had implications for the DSIRs definition of pure

    science:

    Pure science has in the past owed much to observations, suggestions and difficulties which havecome from activities external to the laboratory or the study. So will it be again; and it is ourdesire so to order the relations of workers in pure science to the industries going on aroundthem that they may receive the stimulus of a wider outlook than is always attainable under thelimitations of an academic system of syllabus and examination.25

    Pure science, it seems, could sometimes be undertaken with a specific end in view.26 The

    notion that pure science could be driven by something other than just the curiosity of the

    scientist was a significant departure from the rhetoric of the public science lobby.By the time the fourth annual report was issued in 1919, the idea that it was dangerous

    and even fatal to attempt to organise pure science was qualified by the statement, on the

    other hand it is necessary for a modern State to organise research. Perhaps one of the

    DSIRs strongest proclamations on its own role in the organization of Britains scientific

    resources was made in 1920: One of the most obvious lessons of the war for peoples like

    our own, whose organisation is weak, was that rapid progress in the use of science with

    22

    DSIR 3rd Annual Report, Cd. 9144 (19171918), p. 39.23 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), p. 33.24 Ibid., p. 31.25 Ibid, p. 16.26 DSIR 4th Annual Report, Cmd. 320 (19181919), p. 13.

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    a view to defence or to increased production is not to be expected in any country which

    depends simply upon the undirected genius of its people.27

    Concessions were made to university scientists however. During wartime the DSIR had

    insisted on vetting the results of all work prosecuted with its help to determine if it

    provided any commercial advantage to foreign firms. This requirement was suspended foruniversity grants after the end of the war despite the reservations expressed by Heath that

    Britain ran the risk of foreign firms capitalizing on the results of British research if it was

    freely published. Free publication had to be allowed, however, because of the mental

    outlook of English men of science. In other words, English scientists would not tolerate

    measures that appeared to restrict freedom of publication.28 On more practical grounds, the

    conditions placed on publication by the DSIR were ammunition for its critics: It is the

    more difficult for us to retain these conditions in peace because they are not attached to

    similar grants made by the Medical Research Committee to research workers in Physi-

    ology and the allied sciences. The difference in procedure between the two bodies is

    naturally discussed at the Universities and the bureaucratic tendencies of this Department

    emphasised.29

    The references by the DSIR in its public statements to a prevailing rhetoric on the

    primacy of pure science were an attempt to demonstrate to a scientific readership that the

    interventions of the DSIR in the field of university research would not mean that

    researchers would be forced to undertake work directed to ends determined either by a

    government department or by industry. In its public declarations, he DSIR upheld the

    notion that universities were places for pure science. However, the DSIR did not adhere

    to the claims about the nature of pure science that had been made by the lobby headed by

    individuals such as Gregory. The DSIR claimed that research in the university could be

    inspired by the need to resolve practical problems in industry, and that some university

    departments should work harder to develop a close relationship with local manufacturing.

    The result was a confused and inconsistent series of declarations on the nature of pure

    science that reflected a conflict between the need to reassure scientists that the department

    would not be dictating the nature of their research, and a belief that science in Britain must

    be better organized to benefit the nation.

    FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH IN THE ANNUAL REPORTS OF THE DSIR

    The DSIR did not use the term pure science when discussing the work done by the

    research associations that had been created with the aim of encouraging scientific research

    by British industry. Some of the first associations included the British Iron Manufacturers

    Research Association, the British Photographic Research Association, and the British

    Research Association for the Woollen and Worsted Industry. In order to encourage the

    formation of these research associations, the British government created a Million Fund

    through which it would contribute a pound for every pound paid to fund scientific work

    by industry, up to a limit of 1 million. By the time the Million Fund had been depleted

    in 1932, there were twenty research associations, and most of these were given further

    funds by the state. Many of these associations acquired their own laboratories, as well as

    funding work done at universities and colleges. The DSIR expressed its conviction that the

    27 Ibid.; and DSIR 5th Annual Report, Cmd. 905 (19191920), p. 13.28 DSIR 17/70, 4/3/21, National Archives, London.29 DSIR 17/81, 2/6/19, National Archives, London.

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    joint funding of industrial research by the state and industry would be an important means

    of demonstrating the value of research to British industry.

    The view of Heath and McCormick in 1916 was that industrial managers would need

    to be persuaded of the merits of spending on scientific research. Despite the claims made

    that the outbreak of war had demonstrated the defects of British industry and the absolutenecessity of British firms becoming as scientific as it was said they were in Germany, it

    seems that many British firms simply did not feel they were in crisis as their plants were

    fully occupied. As McCormick expressed it, so long as an industry is prosperous it is very

    apt to take short views and feel little enthusiasm for systematic research. At the same

    time, it was said that some firms were suspicious of government attempts to encourage

    them to form associations among themselves, believing that cooperation in the funding of

    research would diminish the advantage held by individual companies.30 Even if firms

    within a particular sector could be persuaded of the value of science, the DSIR believed

    that industrialists could be quite ignorant of what constituted research. The DSIR

    thought industrialists would have to receive some education in order to understand that an

    easily resolvable technical manufacturing problem was not actually research as the

    DSIR defined it. The DSIR referred to loose use of industrialists and company promoters

    of the word research to describe experiment by trial and error.31 The DSIR reports of

    the first seven years of its existence devoted much space to the elaboration of the type of

    work the new research associations should aspire to do. In setting out a vision of industrial

    research, the DSIR made it clear that it expected manufacturing interests to move beyond

    a concern with the solution of mere practical problems and should focus more on

    fundamental research:

    The particular difficulties encountered in the day-to-day routine of manufacture, the possibilityof improving a process, of diminishing cost of working, enlarging output or enhancing thequality of a product, are matters which we may expect the individual firm to attack directly itbegins to believe at all in the application of science to its own trade. But this is not enough. Weare looking for a growth of a demand for fundamental research, and fundamental research, aswe have seen, requires a very large expenditure on brains and equipment. It also requirescontinuous effort. The firm that starts out upon this quest must either be very powerful or itmust find the necessary strength in association with others.32

    In its first annual report, published during the war in 1916, the DSIR declared that

    the urgent nature of the problems facing Britain, coupled with shortages of manpower

    and equipment, meant that the priority of the department in the short term would be

    the application of science to industrys most pressing issues. An initial focus ontechnical issues that would furnish quick results was considered a useful way to

    convince industrialists to invest more in fundamental research. The DSIR stated that

    a precedent existed showing that businessmen impressed with quick returns from

    practical problem solving by scientists could then be persuaded to support research of

    a more in-depth and long-term character: It was in this way that the Universities of

    the middle states of America convinced the farmers that science was useful to

    agriculture.33

    30 DSIR 17/5, 11/4/16, National Archives, London; and DSIR 2nd Annual Report, Cd. 8718 (19161917), p. 14.31 DSIR 7th Annual Report, Cmd. 1735 (19211922), p. 30.32 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), p. 41.33 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), p. 28.

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    In the period between 1895 and 1913, American agricultural scientists wrote articles in

    Science, often reprinted in Nature in Britain, arguing for an increase in fundamental

    research at agricultural experiment stations. The experiment stations were considered to

    spend most of their time on routine work and investigations intended primarily to meet

    the immediate needs of farmers and orchardists. According to Henry Prentiss Armsby(professor at Pennsylvania State College) in a 1906 article in Science, it was time for

    agricultural investigations to be shifted to work of a broad and fundamental character

    with scientific investigation into the underlying principles of agriculture.34 Armsbys

    article and others evoked the need for fundamental research and described this as work

    that was more in depth than the investigations that had previously been done at the

    experimental stations; it was work that moved beyond routine fertilizer analysis, for

    example. Fundamental research was described as work that would expose the underlying

    principles that governed everyday phenomena. It was also research that had a wider value

    than the specific and discrete inquiries related to the needs of local farmers; it was broad

    and it established principles. The reasons why American researchers did not describe thiswork as pure science may have been related to the fact that it was not research that was

    located in the universities. Perhaps more importantly, these articles were intended to

    persuade potentially skeptical state and national authorities to provide additional funds for

    research activities in agriculture.35 Calling this work pure science may have removed

    these investigations too far from agricultural practice to secure extra money for the

    experimental stations.

    The DSIR defined the fundamental research needed by British industry along very

    similar lines to those used in discussions of agricultural research in the United States. The

    term fundamental research was used in discussions of the work of the research asso-

    ciations with the intention of differentiating between proper research and other activities

    carried out by firms using technical staff. If the latter work dealt with superficial or

    practical issues, then research that was fundamental moved from ad hoc problem solving

    to a consideration of the underlying qualities and behavior of industrial materials or

    processes.

    The DSIR attempted to clarify its point by describing how the various scientific

    activities undertaken by industry required a range of different sites. The modern firm that

    had embraced this type of organization was likely to be found in the United States and the

    DSIR provided a description of the ideal company by Charles Kenneth Mees, the British

    chemist who headed the research laboratories of Eastman Kodak in New York State.Mees, it reported, had described three types of industrial laboratory: the works labora-

    tory involved in routine testing and quality control, the efficiency laboratory that refined

    and improved the products and processes of the firm, and the true research laboratory.

    34 H. J. Webber, A Plan for Publication for Agricultural Experiment Station Investigations, Science, 1907,26:509512. On lobbying for increased government funding for agricultural research during the 1880s seeCharles E. Rosenberg, Science, Technology and Economic Growth: The Case of the Agricultural ExperimentStation Scientist, Agricultural History, 1971, 45:120; Margaret W. Rossiter, The Emergence of AgriculturalScience: Justus Liebig and the Americans, 18401880 (New Haven/London: Yale Univ. Press, 1975); Paolo

    Palladino, Entomology, Ecology and Agriculture: The Making of Scientific Careers in North America 18851985(Amsterdam: Harwood, 1996), p. 31; and Henry Prentiss Armsby, The Promotion of Agricultural Science,Science, 1906, 24:673681.

    35 On the campaign that led to the passing of the Adams Act see Charles E. Rosenberg, The Adams Act:Politics and the Cause of Scientific Research, Agricultural History, 1964, 38:312.

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    This last venue was concerned with work directed not towards the superficial processes

    of industry but towards the fundamental and underlying theory of the subject.36

    In discussions of the work of the research associations, examples were given of suitable

    projects in fundamental research that included the determination of the constitution of

    cotton fibers, the composition of rubber and resins, and the relationship between chemicalcomposition and mechanical properties in alloys. At the same time, fundamental research

    investigated processes of manufacture, such as the determination of the most effective

    methods of stirring or melting to protect optical glass from furnace gases.37 In this usage,

    long-term fundamental research into the underlying principles that governed an industrial

    process or that produced knowledge about the nature of materials, was contrasted with

    short-term work that produced early commercial results or looked to the solution of

    immediate practical problems. The fact that fundamental research was presented as

    desirable because of the power over industrial methods and materials it would afford to

    those who invested in it, rather than because it helped achieve some more esoteric goal of

    progress within a particular scientific discipline, suggests that it was a term the DSIRemployed specifically to address the industrialist. Fundamental research was defined as

    work that considered the most basic materials utilized by industry, or the key processes

    that industry depended upon, and it was not, for example, defined primarily as work in

    chemistry or physics. In stating that its objective was the encouragement of more

    fundamental research, rather than pure science, the DSIR was able to claim that the

    activities prosecuted under its aegis were done with practical goals in mind, and not

    merely to satisfy the whim of scientific researchers. The need to reassure industrial

    managers that the science they supported financially was aimed, first and foremost, at

    bringing benefits to the firm is shown by a comment made in 1925. In a discussion of

    ceramics research undertaken on behalf of the British Refractories Research Association,

    it was stated that better explanation of this work in lay terms should be distributed to firms

    comprising the research association to convince members that they are not subsidising a

    corps of scientific dreamers.38

    The importance of making a distinction between pure science, and fundamental re-

    search furnishing useful results, is also shown in an address given in 1921 to the Royal

    Society by its president, Charles Scott Sherrington. Sherrington praised the system of

    research that had developed in Britain due to the dovetailing of all the different compo-

    nents of professional and scientific societies, universities, and government-funded insti-

    tutions. When discussing the Development Commission, created in 1909, which providedresearch funds for agriculture, fisheries, and forestry, Sherrington wrote: Its programme

    of fishery research, avoiding the terms pure research and applied research in view of

    the possible implication that pure research does not lead to practical results, directs

    research not alone to the solving of particular economic problems. It supports more

    36 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), p. 29.37 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916); and DSIR 2nd Annual Report, Cd. 8718 (19161917). The

    British Photographic Research Association was credited in 1921 with having devoted its attention to researchesof a fundamental character that included the derivation of a fundamental law for the true photographicrendering of contrast: DSIR 6th Annual Report, Cmd. 1491 (19201921), p. 30.

    38 DSIR 10/6, Report of the committee appointed to inspect the British Refractories Research Association,National Archives, London.

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    especially what it terms free research, investigations in this case of the fundamental

    science of the sea and marine life.39

    In the DSIRs report of 1922, a subtle distinction was made between fundamental

    research and pure science in a brief meditation under a heading referring to the industrial

    research associations (Nature of Research Undertaken by the Associations). Here theDSIR stated that the key difference between pure and fundamental research was that of the

    stimulus for the work in the first place:

    The general tendency in pure research is to follow the train of thought of greatest scientificinterest by pursuing the problem initially selected through all the ramifications which maypresent themselves, or at least through all those which interest the investigator. The phenomenainvestigated and the taste of the research worker are, in most cases, the only directive forces.In industrial research, on the other hand, the aim is more definitely objective; the work has adistinct purpose in view which the investigator must bear in mind constantly. He cannot affordto follow attractive by-paths unless he believes they will lead him to a relevant destination. Theproblems of industry draw attention to gaps in scientific knowledge which it is the duty of the

    industrial researcher to fill. The acquisition of such knowledge may be called fundamentalresearch as applied to industry for, without it, far-reaching changes and improvements inindustry are almost impossible.40

    While the DSIR drew a distinction between pure science and its programs of funda-

    mental research, it defined the latter in relation to pure science. As with pure science,

    fundamental research was work that was intended to secure greater knowledge, but this

    time the search was inspired by the need to address a practical problem. Fundamental

    research, here equated with industrial research, was presented as a utilitarian form of pure

    science. So while the DSIR wished to convince the reader that the work it sponsored

    through the research associations would be useful, it did not deny the existence of purescience, and it claimed some correlation between the concepts of pure science and

    fundamental research. Fundamental research was pure science organized to meet some

    practical objective.

    Why did the DSIR feel the need to relate its definition of fundamental research to pure

    science in this way? Was it because the notion of pure science conferred a certain prestige

    upon the scientific worker? At a time in which the concepts of pure science and applied

    science were particularly charged, perhaps the DSIR felt it important to reassure its

    scientific audience that autonomy and status would not be compromised through work

    with the DSIR. At the same time, the DSIR carved out a definition of fundamental

    research intended to persuade industry that long-term, laboratory-based research under-taken by professional scientists would be prosecuted with the aim of solving important

    practical problems, and not merely to satisfy scientific curiosity. Fundamental research

    was a term flexible enough to work with two different groups of readers.

    FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH AS GENERAL RESEARCH

    If definitions of fundamental research in the reports of the DSIR indicated that this work

    was done with a practical goal in mind, in ways that prevalent definitions of pure science

    did not, then we might ask what relationship the DSIR thought should develop between

    39 C. S. Sherrington, The Maintenance of Scientific Research, Nature, 1921, 108:470471, p. 470 (quota-tion).

    40 DSIR 7th Annual Report, Cmd. 1735 (19211922), p. 30.

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    fundamental research and short-term, practical problem solving. Applied science was said

    to be nothing but the application of knowledge gained through pure science, and therefore

    pure science was the essential prerequisite for problem solving. In contrast, fundamental

    research was said by the DSIR to be a method for understanding widespread underlying

    phenomena in contrast to the solution of discrete problems. The relationship betweenfundamental research and other types of investigation presented most often by the DSIR

    was one in which fundamental research established knowledge about the materials and

    processes common to a group of firms, leaving individual companies to deal with

    problems that were specific to that particular business. Fundamental research was work

    that established universal theories or laws that remained constant from company to

    company within a particular sector of industry; it was general research. The more

    fundamental a piece of research was, the more widespread were the phenomena under

    investigation, and by the same token, the more potentially important its results. In this

    arrangement, there was supposedly plenty of room for research by the scientist employed

    by the individual company.

    When firms were brought together in the research associations to fund research into

    common problems, this research would necessarily be fundamental since it investigated

    universals. It was up to the individual firm to address the particular problems that arose

    within its work. By proclaiming that the work of the DSIR was to encourage fundamental

    work in industrial research, the DSIR could avoid the suggestion that public grants favored

    the interests of one individual firm over another:

    Research undertaken exclusively for the benefit of one among a number of competing firmseither by a public institution or at the cost of the State is indeed always likely to give rise todifficulties. Universities and public Research Institutes are maintained by endowments and

    public funds for the common good, and any arrangement which gives exclusive rights orbenefits to a single firm as against others in the same industry is not easy to reconcile with thepublic advantage.41

    Similarly, the Development Commission had stated that when it came to issuing research

    funds for agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, it was important to ensure that money shall

    not go into the pockets of private individuals.42

    The sponsorship of fundamental research through the DSIR provided a means for the

    state to take action to encourage the use of science by British industry without interfering

    in, or directing, the business of the firm. The definition of fundamental research as work

    that was general and broad in its scope, and furthest from the specific issues faced by any

    individual company, allowed government to take some role in the development of

    industry, but at arms length. As the DSIR wrote in 1916, when co-operation has done

    all that is possible in the common interest, there still remain a mass of research work to

    be done by individual firms in their own interests, which will amply repay the cost and

    effort. If fundamental research was cooperative research, the DSIR claimed that, on the

    other hand, pure science was not necessarily work that was best prosecuted cooperatively

    and the existence of different schools of thought and the independent attacks which result

    from them are positive advantages. Interestingly, the department did not seem to think

    that association between firms for the sake of research would result in collusion such as

    41 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), p. 31.42 First Report of the Proceedings of the Development Commissioners for 19111912, No. 305, p. 5 (British

    Parliamentary paper).

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    price fixing: The result of research being available to all members of the industry would

    tend to induce competition and to restrict prices.43

    In addition to the cooperative research done by the research associations, the DSIR

    claimed a further category of research in which it should take an interest. This work was

    described as sufficiently fundamental to affect a range of interests wider than a singletrade while also having a direct bearing on the health, well-being, or the safety of the

    whole population. Described as the most fundamental of all the research sponsored by the

    DSIR, the work included food preservation research, fuel research, research into building

    materials, operating the Geological Survey and Museum, and the work of the National

    Physical Laboratory.44 There was a clear sense in which this work was classified as

    fundamental because it examined some of the basic necessities of all domestic and

    industrial life such as food, coal, and precise electrical and physical standards. It was

    research that was of the widest possible use and because so many national activities

    depended on these things, it was important. Again, the very fundamental quality of this

    work, which made it both extremely important and of such a scale that it was beyond the

    scope of an individual companys responsibility, provided a rationale for state intervention

    and support. The general nature of fundamental research meant that it could be done at the

    expense of the taxpayer. This fundamental research was work that was so general that

    plenty of room was left for the individual firm to investigate particular implications. In the

    case of fuel research, which involved a survey of the characteristics of the nations coals,

    the following was stated in 1919: The investigations of the Fuel Research Board,

    however successful they might be, will only establish fundamental data and broad

    generalisations as a basis for particular applications. And these applications must be

    worked out by the industries themselves.45

    FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH AT THE FOOD INVESTIGATION BOARD AND THE NATIONAL

    PHYSICAL LABORATORY

    While the DSIR described the work of its research organizations and laboratories as

    fundamental on the basis that their investigations were wide in scope and potential

    importance, the organizations themselves could emphasis other aspects of the term

    fundamental research. The Food Investigation Board (FIB) was established in 1918, and

    was concerned with food preservation, the freezing of fish, the putrefaction of meat, and

    the storage of fruit.46 The FIB version of fundamental research was academic work in

    43 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), pp. 14 and 16; and DSIR 16/2, Memorandum to serveas a basis for discussion of the question of the associations for research, 15/12/16, National Archives, London.

    44 DSIR 2nd Annual Report, Cd. 8718 (19161917), p. 17; DSIR 5th Annual Report, Cmd. 905 (19191920),p. 18; DSIR 5th Annual Report, Cmd. 905 (19191920); and DSIR 7th Annual Report, Cmd. 173 (19211922),p. 12. The DSIR took over the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) from the Royal Society in 1918. The NPLswork was initially concerned with the elucidation of physical standards, and research into optical glass,metallurgy, aeronautics, and radio. As well as devising its own research programs, during the 1920s and 1930sthe NPL carried out work through the coordinating boards on behalf of industry, the DSIRs research boards, andother government departments (very often including service departments such as the Admiralty).

    45 DSIR 4th Annual Report, Cmd. 320 (19181919), p. 65. The Fuel Research Board was involved in theclassification of coal throughout the country, with analysis of its constituents and carbonization. The aim was to

    generate data to be used by business. At the same time, the Board investigated the machine cutting of peat, theefficiency of grates, and air pollution: DSIR 5th Annual Report, Cmd. 905 (19191920).46 On the Food Investigation Board see Sally M. Horrocks, Consuming Science: Science, Technology and

    Food in Britain, 18701939 (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Manchester, 1993), pp. 223263; and Hull, Food forThought? (cit. n. 3).

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    physiology, biochemistry, and biophysics. For example, the FIB wrote in 1919: Results

    cannot be looked for quickly. They will be attained the more certainly and speedily by

    intensive study of those branches of science which need strengthening. In another

    example a year later, the board wrote, the fundamental scientific problems underlying the

    preservation of food is, in the present critical state of world supply, a clear nationalnecessity . . . everything should be done to hasten the development of the new sciences of

    biochemistry and biophysics and the application of the results to national practice. The

    FIB constructed a relationship between fundamental research and other fields of investi-

    gation in which the only route to practical results was through research in the biological

    sciences. The first director of the FIB, William Hardy, was reported as saying in an

    address to the British Association of Refrigeration: The industry is essentially a biolog-

    ical industry. Biological thought and biological research fix the conditions necessary for

    successful storage, and to the cold-storage engineer is left the duty of realizing those

    conditions in practice. Logically, biology has precedence. For a body such as the FIB that

    attempted to fashion an academic identity, it was important that readers were persuaded

    that its researchers worked on scientific problems rather than practical ones; fundamental

    research was defined accordingly. It also seems possible that Hardy wished to ensure that

    when it came to determining the nature of new food technologies the balance of power lay

    with the biochemists and physiologists he favored, and not engineers.47 Interestingly, the

    FIB never attempted to introduce the term pure science into discussions of its work.

    As with the FIB, the National Physical Laboratory was described in 1920 as one of a

    number of bodies that dealt with problems of such wide application that no single

    industry, however intelligent or highly organised, could hope to grapple with effectively.

    In the case of the NPL, the study of materials in their physical characteristics and the

    establishment of accurate methods of measuring them and testing them and the products

    made from them, are as important to industry and to the progress of science as they are

    impossible of achievement by private effort.48 (See Figure 1, Figure 2, and Frontispiece.)

    Hence, the work of the NPL was described by the DSIR as fundamental in the sense that

    it dealt with issues that occurred on such a scale that it was not reasonable to expect

    business to fund and prosecute this research. This sense of fundamental meant that the

    NPL was able to refer regularly to its fundamental standardisation work, the work that

    was done at the laboratory to determine, and then disseminate, accurate physical and

    electrical standards. This work was fundamental in that it was work of the widest potential

    application that produced results underpinning many industrial and academic projects.

    However, within the body of its reports the NPL used fundamental research as a way

    of differentiating between its more practical projects and research work. In fact, we couldargue that for the image the NPL attempted to project within its reports after World War

    I, it was the research element of the term fundamental research that was most

    important. While the work of the NPL consisted of plenty of practical investigations such

    as the testing of laboratory glassware and clinical thermometers, and the rating of cables

    for the Admiralty, the laboratorys general board was clear that the NPL was a place of

    47 DSIR 4th Annual Report, Cmd. 320 (19181919), p. 40; DSIR 5th Annual Report, Cmd. 905 (19191920),p. 23; and DSIR 23rd Annual Report, Cmd. 5927 (19371938), p. 11. Hardy died in 1934 and therefore was

    quoted in the twenty-third report. Hardy was keen to use his position with committees such as the Royal SocietyFood (War) Committee to exert control of food policy in Britain and it could be that that his claim as directorof the FIB that biological research would provide solutions to national problems was also part of his lobbyingfor wider political influence. See Hull, Food for thought? (cit. n. 3).

    48 DSIR 5th Annual Report, Cmd. 905 (19191920), pp. 18 and 24.

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    research. When it was suggested that the NPL take on the role of a national body for

    testing electrical appliances, for example, this suggestion was rejected on the grounds that

    routine work of this order was not an appropriate function for the laboratory.49 Sir William

    Ellis reportedly told the general board in 1919:

    The question of commercial testing has always been one which it is somewhat difficult for theExecutive Committee precisely to define, for it is obvious that the primary object of the NPL

    for Research purposes would be largely interfered with if commercial testing, which can beefficiently done by professional bodies existing in the country for the purpose, were carried outextensively at the Laboratory. It is certainly more the province of the Laboratory to investigatescientific problems of a research character than to carry out any large volume of work on acommercial basis, in view of the country possessing professional men ready to undertake suchwork.50

    49 DSIR 2nd Annual Report, Cd. 8718 (19161917); and DSIR 7th Annual Report, Cmd. 1735 (19211922).Within the body of its reports (published in the DSIR annual reports), the NPL distinguished between test workand research. In DSIR 7th Annual Report, Cmd. 1735 (19211922), p. 47, it was said, the volume of test work

    for shipbuilding firms carried out in the William Froude National Tank has decreased somewhat, no doubtlargely owing to the fall in production, but good progress has in consequence been made with the programmeof research approved by the Tank Advisory Committee. This program was concerned with the resistance ofships in waves, and ship maneuvering. See DSIR 4th Annual Report, Cmd. 320 (1918-1919), p. 31.

    50 DSIR 10/2, Meeting of the General Board of the NPL, 19/12/19, National Archives, London.

    Figure 1. The fifty meter corridor for testing surveying tapes and wires at the National PhysicalLaboratory, United Kingdom. The National Physical Laboratory: A Short Account of its Work andOrganisation (London: HMSO, 1924). Permission given by the National Physical Laboratory,

    Queens Printer and Controller of HMSO.

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    A comment such as this has to be considered in the light of an issue that had resulted in

    an enquiry, headed by Gerald Balfour, into the work of the laboratory in 1908. Complaints

    had been made, chiefly by the Institute of Chemistry, that the commercial testing work of

    the laboratory amounted to unfair competition. The NPL was accused of undermining the

    work of professional chemists in the field of materials testing by providing the same

    service at a lower rate. The NPL offer of cheaper services, and the cachet attached toresults issued by a government laboratory, was said to potentially undermine the private

    testing business of some chemists and possibly engineers. In the views of some, routine

    testing of materials was not the province of the NPL which should instead restrict itself

    Figure 2. Column testing machine at the National Physical Laboratory, United Kingdom. TheNational Physical Laboratory: A Short Account of its Work and Organisation (London: HMSO,1924). Permission given by the National Physical Laboratory, Queens Printer and Controller ofHMSO.

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    to general research of the most widespread utility.51 Fundamental research, as general

    research, was the appropriate activity for a state-funded body in contrast to routine testing

    since fundamental research did not encroach on the commercial activities of chemists and

    engineers.

    For the scientists of the NPL, the pursuit of programs of fundamental research, ormerely research, was important in order to maintain the standing of the laboratory as a

    national institution for physics. With the end of the war, the board of the NPL was keen

    to see many of its departments return to the pursuit of the fundamental scientific work

    that was considered part of its natural role. In November 1922, the NPL established a new

    research committee with a view to making the fullest use, for the purposes of funda-

    mental research, of the resources of the Laboratory. This committee consisted of the

    eminent physicists J. J. Thomson, William Bragg, and Ernest Rutherford, and it began by

    devising programs of research in modern physics.52 A designated Physics Building was

    built at Teddington, Middlesex, for these new research programs. Within the context of the

    reports of the NPL, then, fundamental research could refer to academic or theoretical

    studies, the pursuit of which bestowed status on the laboratory.

    FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH DURING THE 1930S AND 1940S

    The 1930s saw a decline in the use of the expression fundamental research by the DSIR

    in its annual reports. At the same time, there was very little evidence of the rhetoric that

    described bodies such as the NPL, the Fuel Research Board, or the Food Investigation

    Board as organizations primarily involved in this type of work. The reports show a

    broadening of the terms involved to describe the projects and investigations done under

    the auspices of the DSIR and its associations. Within this diversity, we can find expres-sions such as comprehensive investigations, investigations into basic problems, and

    on one occasion, the term foundational research. Many investigations were not classi-

    fied at all within the reports of the DSIR, with just the presentation of specific details of

    the completed work and the results. The 1948 report of the DSIR saw the first widespread

    use of the term basic research as a synonym for fundamental research.53 As had been

    the case with fundamental research, basic research referred to investigations that were

    thorough and time-consuming in comparison to short-term projects that addressed urgent

    specific enquiries, or in the post-war language of the DSIR, long range strategic inves-

    tigations versus immediate tactical investigations. As with fundamental research,

    basic research also referred to general investigations as a broad background for local

    and specific enquiries.

    A decline in the exposition of the importance of fundamental research during the

    51 Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Committee Appointed by the Treasury to Enquire Generally into the

    Work Performed by the National Physical Laboratory, Cd. 3927, pp. 3, 18, 23, 19, 27 (British Parliamentarypaper).

    52 DSIR 10/2, Meeting of the General Board of the NPL, 19/12/19, National Archives, London. The directorJ. E. Petavel was reported to say, the Laboratory hopes to return in many of its departments to the fundamentalscientific work which is naturally one of the features of a national institution. On the establishment of the newresearch committee see DSIR 8th Annual Report, Cmd. 1937 (19221923), p. 56 (quotation).

    53

    For the use of broadened terms for research see annual reports of the DSIR for the 1930s. The DSIR wrotein 1948, the Committee in their report, invited attention to the comparatively small amount of civil engineeringresearch being done in the universities, and emphasized the desirability of increasing the contribution of theuniversities to basic or fundamental civil engineering research to scale more in consonance with the nationalimportance of the subject: DSIR 33rd Annual Report, Cmd. 7761 (19471948), p. 40.

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    interwar period may have reflected a sense among officials at the DSIR that the standing

    of the department was more assured. Not all the research associations had actually been

    engaged in the pursuit of fundamental research, despite the discussion of its importance

    in the reports of the DSIR, and this may have been one reason why the phrase was not

    routinely used about their work beyond the early years. The Research Association ofBritish Rubber and Tyre Manufacturers, for example, stated the following as early as

    1921:

    Those responsible for the founding of this Association have realised that the importance ofresearch to industry lies not so much in the possibility of very occasional discoveries of arevolutionary nature as in the sure benefits which are the abundant fruit yielded by theapplication of science to the improvement of existing methods. The functions of the Associ-ation, while not excluding the study of fundamental problems, include more prosaic consid-erations such as improvement in the control of manufacturing operations and the testing of rawmaterials and final products.54

    This tendency of research associations to focus on the solution of practical problems

    appears to have been acknowledged in the DSIR annual report of 1931: A noticeable

    feature during the past year has been a wide recognition by research associations of the

    necessity to give increasing attention to the day-to-day problems encountered by firms in

    their ordinary processes of manufacture. Privately, Heath had stated at an early stage that

    the DSIR was not, in fact, willing to insist that research associations conform to any

    definition of fundamental research when it came to their research plans. He wrote in a

    letter to a cotton manufacturer in 1918 that the government had no intention of limiting

    the work of the Associations to pure or fundamental or direct research because in

    practice it was impossible to draw the line.55 This comment confirmed that the term

    fundamental research was used more for its rhetorical value than for any real attempt at

    classification of scientific work. Categories of pure science or fundamental research

    were of little importance in determining the allocation of funds by the DSIR but they were

    very important in its representation of goals during its early years.

    During the interwar period and after World War II, the term fundamental research

    was found in a variety of additional locations, one of which was the reports of other

    research bodies that were government-funded. Fundamental research was used in

    discussions of state-funded medical and agricultural research from the 1920s onwards, and

    in the organization of colonial research during the 1940s. The Agricultural Research

    Council (ARC) and Medical Research Council (MRC) did not often use the term pure

    science, thus indicating that an activity defined in terms of its great distance from utilitywas not considered an appropriate description for work receiving state funding that was

    intended to benefit human health and national prosperity. However, while sometimes

    using the expression fundamental research, neither the MRC or the ARC undertook the

    type of lengthy discussion regarding its nature and importance found in the DSIRs annual

    reports. This was probably relate