Research in Industry

Abstract

In the series of conferences and reports during the last few years which have been planned to encourage the expansion of research in industry, it was natural that the main stress should be laid on the past achievements of research. Exhortation was rightly based on a description of such achievements and the methods by which they were obtained; but although the different ways in which research can be organised were usually indicated there was rarely any critical appraisal of the alternatives or consideration as to whether the same or greater results might have been obtained with less effort in some other way. This critical review of past experience is exactly what one expects, however, in such a book as the present, and unfortunately Dr. Hill gives us little more than did Sir Frank Heath and A. L. Hetherington in their survey, “Industrial Research and Development in the United Kingdom”, last year. Dr. Hill's survey, it is true, is not limited to the United Kingdom. He has brief descriptive accounts of co-operative research elsewhere in the British Empire and also in the United States, and his book includes much information which for the most part was previously scattered and not so conveniently accessible in one volume.

Co-operative Research in Industry

By Dr. D. W. Hill. Pp. 147 + 3 plates. (London: Hutchinson's Scientific and Technical Publications, 1947.) 10s. 6d. net.