John Greenleaf Whittier - "The Conflict With Slavery, Part 1, From Vol. VII,"

Ben Jonson - "Volpone; Or, The Fox"

Tobias Smollett - "The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Part I."

Plato (see Appendix I) - "Alcibiades I"

The Popular Science Monthly Volume LXXXVI July to September, 1915

U >> Unkown >> The Popular Science Monthly Volume LXXXVI July to September, 1915




According to MacVail, in the pre-vaccination period smallpox
was nine times as fatal as measles and seven and one half times
as fatal as whooping cough. To-day in the vaccinated community
its fatality is negligable, in the unvaccinated it is as high
as it was in the Middle Ages. In the city of Berlin, where
vaccination is absolutely compulsory, there is no smallpox
hospital at all; the cases of smallpox in that city being only
a few unvaccinated foreigners. In 1912 the deaths in New York
City were as follow: 671 from measles, 614 from scarlatina, 500
from typhoid fever, 187 from whooping cough and 2 from
smallpox.

In London there were in 48 years of the seventeenth century no
less than 10 epidemics of smallpox; in the whole of the
eighteenth, 19; and in the nineteenth no epidemic at all during
which smallpox was responsible for more than one tenth of the
deaths from all causes in any one year.

In Sweden, the highest death-rate before vaccination was 7.23
per 1,000 persons, the lowest 0.30; under permissive
vaccination the highest was 2.57, the lowest 0.12; under
compulsory vaccination the highest was 0.94, the lowest 0.0005.

It is so frequently said that the disappearance of smallpox is
due not to vaccination, but to improved general hygiene, that
we must look into this criticism with some care. In the first
place, a large diminution in the mortality from smallpox
occurred before there was any great change in the unsanitary
conditions of the English towns, before there was any enforcing
of the isolation of patients either in hospitals or in their
own homes. Since the introduction of vaccination, measles and
whooping cough still remain in the status quo ante, while
smallpox has been exterminated in all fully vaccinated
communities, these two diseases of children are as prevalent as
ever in England even although the general sanitary conditions
have been immensely improved in that country. Of course the
effects of vaccination wear out in time, and that is why it is
well to be revaccinated once or twice. Now there has been a
remarkable progressive change in the age-incidence of smallpox
"which can only be explained," says Dr. Newsholme, "on the
assumption that vaccination protects children from smallpox and
that the protection diminishes, though it never entirely
disappears, as age advances.

The "conscience clause" should be immediately removed from the
act in which it was inserted on the grounds that it is weak and
reactionary in principle, not in the interests of the
development of the legislative aspect of the science of public
health, and that it permits in certain unintelligent
communities quite a considerable number of unvaccinated
children to grow up as a permanent menace to their town and
district.

When the history of medicine becomes more widely known, when
the principles of prophylactic inoculation are more generally
understood, when respect for science is the rule rather than
the exception, when great achievements in the saving rather
than the destroying of life are objects of national veneration,
then we may hope to see the day when it will be unhesitatingly
admitted that the discovery by Dr. Edward Jenner, the
Englishman, was one of the most momentous in the history of the
human race, and that his life was one of the noblest, most
unselfish and, in its far-reaching effects, most important that
has ever been lived on this planet.



THE VALUE OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH

BY W. A. HAMOR

MELLON INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF
PITTSBURGH

THE aim of all industrial operations is toward perfection, both
in process and mechanical equipment, and every development in
manufacturing creates new problems. It is only to be expected,
therefore, that the industrial researcher is becoming less and
less regarded as a burden unwarranted by returns.
Industrialists have, in fact, learned to recognize chemistry as
the intelligence department of industry, and manufacturing is
accordingly becoming more and more a system of scientific
processes. The accruement of technical improvements in
particularly the great chemical industry is primarily dependent
upon systematic industrial research, and this is being
increasingly fostered by American manufacturers.

Ten thousand American chemists are at present engaged in
pursuits which affect over 1,000,000 wage-earners and produce
over $5,000,000,000 worth of manufactured products each year.
These trained men have actively and effectively collaborated in
bringing about stupendous results in American industry. There
are, in fact, at least nineteen American industries in which
the chemist has been of great assistance, either in founding
the industry, in developing it, or in refining the methods of
control or of manufacture, thus ensuring profits, lower costs
and uniform outputs.

At the recent symposium on the contributions of the chemist to
American industries, at the fiftieth meeting of the American
Chemical Society in New Orleans, the industrial achievements of
that scientific scout, the chemist, were brought out
clearly.[1]

[1] In this connection, see Hesse, J. Ind. Eng. Chem., 7
(1915), 293.



The chemist has made the wine industry reasonably independent
of climatic conditions; he has enabled it to produce
substantially the same wine, year in and year out, no matter
what the weather; he has reduced the spoilage from 25 per cent.
to 0.46 per cent. of the total; he has increased the shipping
radius of the goods and has made preservatives unnecessary. In
the copper industry he has learned and has taught how to make
operations so constant and so continuous that in the
manufacture of blister copper valuations are less than $1.00
apart on every $10,000 worth of product and in refined copper
the valuations of the product do not differ by more than $1.00
in every $50,000 worth of product. The quality of output is
maintained constant within microscopic differences. Without the
chemist the corn-products industry would never have arisen and
in 1914 this industry consumed as much corn as was grown in
that year by the nine states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey
and Delaware combined; this amount is equal to the entire
production of the state of North Carolina and about 80 per
cent. of the production of each of the states of Georgia,
Michigan and Wisconsin; the chemist has produced over 100
useful commercial products from corn, which, without him, would
never have been produced. In the asphalt industry the chemist
has taught how to lay a road surface that will always be good,
and he has learned and taught how to construct a suitable road
surface for different conditions of service. In the cottonseed
oil industry, the chemist standardized methods of production,
reduced losses, increased yields, made new use of wastes and
by-products, and has added somewhere between $10 and $12 to the
value of each bale of cotton grown. In the cement industry, the
chemist has ascertained new ingredients, has utilized
theretofore waste products for this purpose, has reduced the
waste heaps of many industries and made them his starting
material; he has standardized methods of manufacture,
introduced methods of chemical control and has insured
constancy and permanency of quality and quantity of output. In
the sugar industry, the chemist has been active for so long a
time that "the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." The
sugar industry without the chemist is unthinkable. The Welsbach
mantle is distinctly a chemist's invention and its successful
and economical manufacture depends largely upon chemical
methods. It would be difficult to give a just estimate of the
economic effect of this device upon illumination, so great and
valuable is it. In the textile industry, he has substituted
uniform, rational, well-thought out and simple methods of
treatment of all the various textile fabrics and fibers where
mystery, empiricism, "rule-of-thumb" and their accompanying
uncertainties reigned. In the fertilizer industry, it was the
chemist who learned and who taught how to make our immense beds
of phosphate rock useful and serviceable to man in the
enrichment of the soil; he has taught how to make waste
products of other industries useful and available for
fertilization and he has shown how to make the gas works
contribute to the fertility of the soil. In the soda industry,
the chemist can successfully claim that he has founded it,
developed it and brought it to its present state of perfection
and utility, but not without the help of other technical men;
the fundamental ideas were and are chemical. In the leather
industry, the chemist has given us all of the modern methods of
mineral tanning, and without them the modern leather industry
is unthinkable. In the case of vegetable-tanned leather he has
also stepped in, standardized the quality of incoming material
and of outgoing product. In the flour industry the chemist has
learned and taught how to select the proper grain for specific
purposes, to standardize the product, and how to make flour
available for certain specific culinary and food purposes. In
the brewing industry, the chemist has standardized the methods
of determining the quality of incoming material and of outgoing
products, and has assisted in the development of a product of a
quality far beyond that obtaining prior to his entry into that
industry. In the preservation of foods, the chemist made the
fundamental discoveries; up to twenty years ago, however, he
took little or no part in the commercial operations, but now is
almost indispensable to commercial success. In the water supply
of cities, the chemist has put certainty in the place of
uncertainty; he has learned and has shown how, by chemical
methods of treatment and control, raw water of varying quality
can be made to yield potable water of substantially uniform
composition and quality. The celluloid industry and the
nitro-cellulose industry owe their very existence and much of
their development to the chemist. In the glass industry the
chemist has learned and taught how to prepare glasses suitable
for the widest ranges of uses and to control the quality and
quantity of the output. In the pulp and paper industry, the
chemist made the fundamental observations, inventions and
operations and to-day he is in control of all the operations of
the plant itself; to the chemist also is due the cheap
production of many of the materials entering into this
industry, as well as the increased and expanding market for the
product itself.

Sufficient has been presented to show that certain industries
of the United States have been elevated by an infusion of
scientific spirit through the medium of the chemist, and that
manufacturing, at one time entirely a matter of empirical
judgment and individual skill, is more and more becoming a
system of scientific processes. The result is that American
manufacturers are growing increasingly appreciative of
scientific research, and are depending upon industrial
researchers--"those who catalyze raw materials by brains"--as
their pathfinders. It is now appropriate to consider just how
industrialists are taking advantage of the universities and the
products of these.

THE METHODS EMPLOYED IN THE ATTACK OF INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS[2]

[2] See also Bacon, Science, N. S., 40 (1914), 871.

When an industry has problems requiring solution, these
problems can be attacked either inside or outside of the plant.
If the policy of the industrialist is that all problems are to
be investigated only within the establishment, a research
laboratory must be provided for the plant or for the company.
At present, in the United States, probably not more than one
hundred chemical manufacturing establishments have research
laboratories or employ research chemists, although at least
five companies are spending over $100,000 per year in research.
In Germany, and perhaps also in England, such research
laboratories in connection with chemical industries have been
much more common. The great laboratories of the Badische Anilin
und Soda Fabrik and of the Elberfeld Company are striking
examples of the importance attached to such research work in
Germany, and it would be difficult to adduce any stronger
argument in support of its value than the marvelous
achievements of these great firms.

A frequent difficulty encountered in the employment of
researchers or in the establishment of a research laboratory,
is that many manufacturers have been unable to grasp the
importance of such work, or know how to treat the men in charge
so as to secure the best results. The industrialist may not
even fully understand just what is the cause of his
manufacturing losses or to whom to turn for aid. If he
eventually engages a researcher, he is sometimes likely to
regard him as a sort of master of mysteries who should be able
to accomplish wonders, and, if he can not see definite results
in the course of a few months, is occasionally apt to consider
the investment a bad one and to regard researchers, as a class,
as a useless lot. It has not been unusual for the chemist to be
told to remain in his laboratory, and not to go in or about the
works, and he must also face the natural opposition of workmen
to any innovations, and reckon with the jealousies of foremen
and of various officials.

From the standpoint of the manufacturer, one decided advantage
of the policy of having all problems worked out within the
plant is that the results secured are not divulged, but are
stored away in the laboratory archives and become part of the
assets and working capital of the corporation which has paid
for them; and it is usually not until patent applications are
filed that this knowledge, generally only partially and
imperfectly, becomes publicly known. When it is not deemed
necessary to take out patents, such knowledge is often
permanently buried.

In this matter of the dissemination of knowledge concerning
industrial practice, it must be evident to all that there is
but little cooperation between manufacturers and the
universities. Manufacturers, and especially chemical
manufacturers, have been quite naturally opposed to publishing
any discoveries made in their plants, since "knowledge is
power" in manufacturing as elsewhere, and new knowledge gained
in the laboratories of a company may often very properly be
regarded as among the most valuable assets of the concern. The
universities and the scientific societies, on the other hand,
exist for the diffusion of knowledge, and from their standpoint
the great disadvantage of the above policy is this concealment
of knowledge, for it results in a serious retardation of the
general growth and development of science in its broader
aspects, and renders it much more difficult for the
universities to train men properly for such industries, since
all the text-books and general knowledge available would in all
probability be far behind the actual manufacturing practice.
Fortunately, the policy of industrial secrecy is becoming more
generally regarded in the light of reason, and there is a
growing inclination among manufacturers to disclose the details
of investigations, which, according to tradition, would be
carefully guarded. These manufacturers appreciate the facts
that public interest in chemical achievements is stimulating to
further fruitful research, that helpful suggestions and
information may come from other investigators upon the
publication of any results, and that the exchange of knowledge
prevents many costly repetitions.

INDUSTRIAL FELLOWSHIPS

If the manufacturer elects to refer his problem to the
university or technical school--and because of the facilities
for research to be had in certain institutions, industrialists
are following this plan in constantly increasing numbers--such
reference may take the form of an industrial fellowship and
much has been said and may be said in favor of these
fellowships. They allow the donor to keep secret for three
years the results secured, after which they may be published
with the donor's permission. They also secure to him patent
rights. They give highly specialized training to properly
qualified men, and often secure for them permanent positions
and shares in the profits of their discoveries. It should be
obvious at the outset that a fellowship of this character can
be successful only when there are close confidential relations
obtaining between the manufacturer and the officer in charge of
the research; for no such cooperation can be really effective
unless based upon a thorough mutual familiarity with the
conditions and an abiding faith in the integrity and sincerity
of purpose of each other. It is likely to prove a poor
investment for a manufacturer to seek the aid of an
investigator if he is unwilling to take such expert into his
confidence and to familiarize him with all the local and other
factors which enter into the problem from a manufacturing
standpoint.

THE MELLON INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH[3]

[3] For a detailed description of the Mellon Institute and its
work, see Bacon and Hamor, J. Ind. Eng. Chem., 7 (1915),
326-48.



According to the system of industrial research in operation at
the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research of the University
of Pittsburgh, which is not, in any sense of the word, a
commercial institution, a manufacturer having a problem
requiring solution may become the donor of a fellowship; the
said manufacturer provides the salary of the researcher
selected to conduct the investigation desired, the institute
furnishing such facilities as are necessary for the conduct of
the work.

The money paid in to found a fellowship is paid over by the
institute in salary to the investigator doing the work. In
every case, this researcher is most carefully selected for the
problem in hand. The institute supplies free laboratory space
and the use of all ordinary chemicals and equipment. The
chemist or engineer who is studying the problem works under the
immediate supervision of men who are thoroughly trained and
experienced in conducting industrial research.

At the present time, the Mellon Institute, which, while an
integral part of the University of Pittsburgh, has its own
endowment, is expending over $150,000 annually for salaries and
maintenance. A manufacturer secures for a small
expenditure--just sufficient to pay the salary of the fellow,
as the man engaged on the investigation is called--all the
benefits of an organization of this size, and many have availed
themselves of the advantages, twenty-eight companies
maintaining fellowships at the present time.

Each fellow has the benefit of the institute's very excellent
apparatus, chemical and library equipment--facilities which are
so essential in modern research; and because of these
opportunities and that of being able to pursue post-graduate
work for higher degrees, it has been demonstrated that a higher
type of researcher can be obtained by the institute for a
certain remuneration than can be generally secured by
manufacturers themselves. There is a scarcity of men gifted
with the genius for research, and it requires much experience
in selecting suitable men and in training them to the desirable
degree of efficiency, after having determined the special
qualities required. Important qualifications in industrial
researchers are keenness, inspiration and confidence; these are
often unconsidered by manufacturers, who in endeavoring to
select, say, a research chemist, are likely to regard every
chemist as a qualified scientific scout.

All researches conducted at the Mellon Institute are surrounded
with the necessary secrecy, and any and all discoveries made by
the fellow during the term of his fellowship become the
property of the donor.

When the Mellon Institute moved into its $350,000 home in
February, 1915, the industrial fellowship system in operation
therein passed out of its experimental stage. During the years
of its development no inherent sign of weakness on the part of
any one of its constituent factors appeared; in fact, the
results of the fellowships have been uniformly successful.
While problems have been presented by companies which, upon
preliminary investigation, have proved to be so difficult as to
be practically impossible of solution, there have been so many
other problems confronting these companies that important ones
were found which lent themselves to solution; and often the
companies did not realize, until after investigations were
started, just what the exact nature of their problems was and
just what improvements and savings could be made in their
manufacturing processes.

Fellowships at the Mellon Institute are constantly increasing
in the amounts subscribed by industrialists for their
maintenance and, as well, in their importance. The renewal,
year after year, of such fellowships, as those on baking,
petroleum and ores, goes to show the confidence which
industrialists have in the Mellon Institute. Again, the large
sums of money which are being spent by companies in bringing
small unit plants to develop the processes which have been
worked out in the laboratory, demonstrate that practical
results are being secured.

Where there have been sympathy and hearty cooperation between
the Mellon Institute and the company concerned, the institute
has been able to push through to a successful conclusion large
scale experiments in the factory of the company, which in the
beginning of the fellowship seemed almost impossible: it may be
said that the results of the fellowships at the Mellon
Institute indicate that a form of service to industry has been
established, the possibilities of which no man can say.



A FEW CLASSIC UNKNOWNS IN MATHEMATICS

BY PROFESSOR G. A. MILLER

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

KING HIERO is said to have remarked, in view of the marvelous
mechanical devices of Archimedes, that he would henceforth
doubt nothing that had been asserted by Archimedes. This spirit
of unbounded confidence in those who have exhibited unusual
mathematical ability is still extant. Even our large city
papers sometimes speak of a mathematical genius who could solve
every mathematical problem that was proposed to him. The
numerous unexpected and far-reaching results contained in the
elementary mathematical text-books, and the ease with which the
skilful mathematics teachers often cleared away what appeared
to be great difficulties to the students have filled many with
a kind of awe for unusual mathematical ability.

In recent years the unbounded confidence in mathematical
results has been somewhat shaken by a wave of mathematical
skepticism which gained momentum through some of the popular
writings of H. Poincare and Bertrand Russell. As instances of
expressions which might at first tend to diminish such
confidence we may refer to Poincare's contention that
geometrical axioms are conventions guided by experimental facts
and limited by the necessity to avoid all contradictions, and
to Russell's statement that "mathematics may be defined as the
subject in which we never know what we are talking about nor
whether what we are saying is true."

The mathematical skepticism which such statements may awaken is
usually mitigated by reflection, since it soon appears that
philosophical difficulties abound in all domains of knowledge,
and that mathematical results continue to inspire relatively
the highest degrees of confidence. The unknowns in mathematics
to which we aim to direct attention here are not of this
philosophical type but relate to questions of the most simple
nature. It is perhaps unfortunate that in the teaching of
elementary mathematics the unknowns receive so little
attention. In fact, it seems to be customary to direct no
attention whatever to the unsolved mathematical difficulties
until the students begin to specialize in mathematics in the
colleges or universities.

One of the earliest opportunities to impress on the student the
fact that mathematical knowledge is very limited in certain
directions presents itself in connection with the study of
prime numbers. Among the small prime numbers there appear many
which differ only by 2. For instance, 3 and 5, 5 and 7, 11 and
13, 17 and 19, 29 and 31, constitute such pairs of prime
numbers. The question arises whether there is a limit to such
pairs of primes, or whether beyond each such pair of prime
numbers there must exist another such pair.

This question can be understood by all and might at first
appear to be easy to answer, yet no one has succeeded up to the
present time in finding which of the two possible answers is
correct. It is interesting to note that in 1911 E. Poincare
transmitted a note written by M. Merlin to the Paris Academy of
Sciences in which a theorem was announced from which its author
deduced that there actually is an infinite number of such prime
number pairs, but this result has not been accepted because no
definite proof of the theorem in question was produced.

Another unanswered question which can be understood by all is
whether every even number is the sum of two prime numbers. It
is very easy to verify that each one of the small even numbers
is the sum of a pair of prime numbers, if we include unity
among the prime numbers; and, in 1742, C. Goldbach expressed
the theorem, without proof, that every possible even number is
actually the sum of at least one pair of prime numbers. Hence
this theorem is known as Goldbach's theorem, but no one has as
yet succeeded in either proving or disproving it.

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