measured in money, and at one and the same time having management almost exclusively concerned with giving them as little as possible.

We feel that one of the most obvious abuses in the whole field of technical and industrial research and technology is this whole patent provision. I am not discussing it not from the point of view of who has the equity in the patent so much as establishing once and for all a principle of effective remuneration to scientists and technologists who do make such contributions. I might add that a poll of the rank and file scientists in this country indicates that they are clamoring for reform in this connection.

In conclusion, I would like to point out that in the Fulbright bill, S. 1248, there are special provisions for rewards and royalties to go to inventors. However, as I understand it, there will be separate hearings on the Fulbright bill and I would like the privilege to testify separately on that bill when it comes up. I just wanted to mention it here as an indication that there is thinking along these lines, and that we think it is necessary.

In concluding my remarks, Mr. Chairman, I would like again to refer to the fact that this whole concept of a National Science Foundation has wonderful implications in this country and recognizes the fundamental responsibility of Government to stimulate and encourage engineering and technological and social advancement. I think you will find that the scientists and technologists of this country will greet this thing enthusiastically, will participate in it, will help to make it an instrument of development.

Finally, speaking for the section of scientists and technologists affiliated with the labor movement, I would ask that the committee itself give careful consideration to the urgent necessity for not overlooking the importance of the role and the urgency of labor's participation in fundamental policy making in the National Science Foundation.

I

Senator YOUNG. Mr. Berne, I think you raised a very important question when you mentioned the salaries of scientists and so on. have personal knowledge of several scientists who stayed in the work almost entirely because of the love of work rather than the salary that they received. If it was made more attractive, we might attain the leading position in the world which we should.

Also, I should like to say that you should be interested to know that the engineering societies and engineering colleges also recommend that engineering and technology be included in the proposed National Research Foundation.

Mr. BERNE. I would like to observe, in response to your first remark, that a lot of people enter into this field without regard to their financial rewards. It seems to me a peculiar psychology to reward these people by refusing to elevate their standard just because they are willing to do it despite their personal considerations. It seems to me such people should be rewarded rather than penalized for their civic consciousness.

Senator YOUNG. I thoroughly agree with you Thank you for your statement, Mr. Berne.

Mr. Edwin Land is the next witness. Will you give your name and whom you represent to the reporter?

78860-46-pt. 4-8

TESTIMONY OF EDWIN H. LAND, PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH OF POLAROID CORP., CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

Mr. LAND. My name is Edwin H. Land. I am president and director of research of Polaroid Corp., Cambridge, Mass.

When I left Cambridge last week, the attitude of many of my scientific associates was that there was no point in bothering to testify for bills for a National Scientific Research Foundation when all scientific activity of the country was about to be placed in jeopardy by the impending legislation for the control of the atomic bomb.

As Professor Rabi made clear in a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly, the great secret of the atomic bomb is one that is not ours to keep because it has not yet been discovered. That secret is the law describing the binding forces within the nucleus. I am not a nuclear physicist but I would guess that any of our scientists would swap our whole $2,000,000,000 atomic bomb plant for that one scientist who will devise the experiment for learning this law. We must remember that just as that savage who discovered fire was ignorant of the behavior of the outer regions of the atom involved in combustion, so we are in similar savage ignorance of the laws involved in this new kind of transformation which gives us energy from the inside of the atom.

If these laws are discovered under the direction of a commission, if they are discovered in the confines of a great and powerful secret society, it will be the first time in history that a basic law has been discovered by planning. All the evidence in the history of science orders us to create an utterly free scientific society involving the whole range of the American public if we are to comprehend the laws of our new kind of fire rather than dedicate ourselves in ignorance to the wonder and the mystery of the atomic bomb. I believe that the real bills for controlling atomic energy, the real bills involving the happiness, strength, and defense of our country, are these bills we are now considering for a National Scientific Research Foundation. One of the broad purposes of the proposed bills for a National Research Foundation is to discover talent, foster it, and to subsidize it in the universities where it will be developed. About this broad purpose there has been almost no disagreement among those testifying about the bills. If this broad purpose is carried out promptly, we will have taken the first step toward the solution of the problem of the atomic bomb. The reason the whole country is puzzled and bewildered at the moment is because there is no solution today. There can be no solution because we do not understand the nucleus and we do not understand the Russians. If, during the course of the next 10 years, we can expand the American scientific community, expand to every locality our activity in basic and applied science, get to understand the nucleus, negotiate, argue, trade, bargain, work with, and finally get to understand the Russians and get them to understand us, then, perhaps the terrible shadow may start to lift.

There are two ways of expanding the American scientific community. One is by following the programs in these bills for discovering scientific talent and fostering its development; in short by the production of enough trained scientists, not only to work in basic science, but also to participate in every phase of the industrial aspect of community life. The other and this is the field of my personal interest

is to develop thousands of new small scientific industries. Since the bills amply cover the first point, I should like to go on to draw the picture of this new kind of industrial America and then discuss the provisions of the bills with relation to this picture.

As I visualize it, the business of the future will be a scientific, social, and economic unit. It will be vigorously creative in pure science, where its contributions will compare with those of the universities. Indeed, it will be expected that the career of the pure scientist will be as much in the corporation laboratory as in the university.

Internally this business will be a new type of social unit. There will be a different kind of boundary between management and labor. All will regard themselves as labor in the sense of having as their common purpose learning new things and applying that knowledge for public welfare. The machinist will be proud of and informed about the company's scientific advances; the scientist will enjoy the reduction to practice of his basic perceptions.

Economically such small scientific manufacturing companies can, I believe, carry us quickly into the next and best phase of the industrial revolution. A thousand small companies, each employing 2,000 people, including 50 scientists, grossing $20,000,000 each, spending $1,000,000 each on research, would do this:

Employ 50,000 research men.

Spend $1,000,000,000 on research and engineering.
Employ 2,000,000 people directly.

Contribute $20,000,000,000 to the national income directly, and much more indirectly.

And year by year our national scene would change in the way, I think, all Americans dream of. Each individual will be a member of a group small enough so that he feels a full participant in the purpose and activity of the group. His voice will be heard and his individuality recognized. He will not feel the bitter need, now felt by countless thousands, for becoming a member of a great mystic mass movement that will protect him and give him a sense of importance.

How, specifically, will the scientific manufacturing company of the future operate? How will it achieve the income indicated above? What articles will it make?

First of all, this new company will start by contemplating all of the recent advances in pure science and in engineering. Its staff will be alive to the significance of newly available polyamide molecules, the cyclotron, radar techniques, the details of new processes for color photography, and recent advances of enzymology. A group of 50 good scientists contemplating one of these fields and inspired by curiosity about them and a determination to make something new and useful, can invent and develop an important new field in about 2 years. This new field will be a monopoly for the group-a monopoly in the best sense of the word-because it will derive from justifiable patents an important invention, and from know-how deliberately acquired by the group.

One of the purposes of the bill introduced by Senator Kilgore is, I think, to prevent the concentration of scientific activity and of distinguished scientists in a few large corporations. While I feel that both the war and the prewar periods have demonstrated that the con

centration that did occur was of enormous benefit to the country and that it would be a grave hazard to prevent such concentrations from occurring, I feel equally strong about the desirability of meeting what is objectionable in such concentration by having thousands of other small laboratories as well staffed in quality, if not quantity, of scientists. These small laboratories because of their compactness, freedom from such institutional control as exists in large corporations, the close relationship which can exist between the scientists and the people making their products, would, I believe, create far more new fields than would the large laboratories and would be the best method of preventing significant monopolies in any essential field. As a matter of fact, I think they would add to the role of the large corporation laboratories the function of cooperating with thousands of smaller groups.

Now the protection of these small industries in their relationship with the large corporation could be only of one kind and that is, simple old-fashioned patent monopoly, given to them by the Government in return for their disclosure of the secrets produced by their hard work. Who can object to such monopolies? Who can object to a monopoly when there are several thousands of them? Who can object to a monopoly when every few years the company enjoying that monopoly revises, alters, perhaps even discards its product, in order to provide a superior one to the public? Who can object to a monopoly when any new company, if it is built around a scientific nucleus, can create a new monopoly of its own by creating a wholly new field? It seems to me that the competition from a thousand scientific companies is a much healthier and surer way of handling our monopoly problem than an attempt by Government to have research done for small businesses.

I want to make it clear that I am not opposing research by government. What I do oppose is the concept that research by government should be substituted for research by the small business. I oppose this substitution because I am so confident of this principle: The small business grows strong by having its own scientists and by building itself around their efforts.

This picture of our future industrial pattern suggests the following observations on the specific provisions of the bills:

The training of scientists in the necessary numbers is adequately covered by both S. 1297 and S. 1285.

The problems involved in the ownership of patent rights are in my opinion better handled by S. 1285. The kind of business I have described should be able to perform many useful services for the Government both in military and nonmilitary periods. Since the very existence of the small companies in competition with large companies depends on the maintenance of their patent structure, it would be impossible for them to take Government research contracts if these contracts automatically enabled the Government to license other companies under any of their patents. Obviously the Government should get patent rights for its own uses on the research it buys, frequently it should get rights to relicense on research it has bought, but if it were to attempt to get patent rights on research it has not bought, no company could afford to accept a contract. The technique developed during the war by the OSRD for handling patent rights seems to have worked out satisfactorily both for the Government and for private companies and it would therefore seem best to

leave the question of patent rights for flexible negotiation on the OSRD pattern at the time each contract is made.

The best administrative set-up in my opinion is that provided in bill S. 1285, in which the board of directors is appointed by the President and picks its own director. Yet, I still sympathize with those who are opposed to complete isolation of this scientific group from the political world. It occurs to me that it would be valuable to have a joint liaison committee consisting, for example, of three members of the board and three Members of Congress. This committee would be a mutually educational group in which the members from the board kept Congress continuously acquainted with the longrange purpose of the board and in which the Members from Congress could indicate the needs of the Nation as reflected by Congress.

This liaison committee would have no direct authority in its relationship with the scientific world so that it would in no way interfere with the freedom that scientists feel they need. At the same time the political wisdom of Congress would be reflected continuously in the program of the board. Certainly the time has come when scientific education of politicians and the political education of scientists is an obvious need. They must work together from here on. This friendly cross education of each other could proceed without altering the principle that scientists work best for scientists and that only a scientist understands the kind of freedom that his fellow scientists need.

This liaison committee would seem to be particularly suited for considering one important problem for which a solution has not yet been proposed: The encouragement of individuals who are primarily interested in new applications of recent advances in pure science rather than in basic inquiry itself. The problem arises because universities in general will be occupied with problems in pure science, while each individual industry tends to be occupied with the problems in applied science limited to the field of its chosen activity, which, by definition, is an old field of activity. Thus, a young man leaving the university with the proposal of a new kind of activity is frequently not able to find a place in an established organization for the development of his ideas. The country, however, urgently needs these new types of industrial activity. We should not be satisfied with the cycle of displacement of one good technical product made of metal by the same product made of plastic, and so on, in a rather unimaginative application of fundamental developments. What is required is the rapid invention and evolution of peacetime analogues of jet-propelled vehicles, bazookas, and the multiplicity of secret, bold developments of the war. Young men, fresh from their studies, are often in the best intellectual position to work out these new applications of science. Those who wish to strike out for themselves should have the opportunity to complete their inventions both theoretically and practically and build them into actual enterprises.

Senator YOUNG. Mr. Land, your observations on the scholarships and fellowships are good. Would you recommend an exchange of students with other countries, such as Russia, England, and France? Mr. LAND. Yes; I should.

Senator YOUNG. I think that would aid materially in helping other countries to attain and maintain a higher standard of living, wouldn't it?