Abstract
ONE of the immediate results of the harnessing of the whole of the man-power of Great Britain to the war effort has been to engender an almost universal appreciation of the vital part played by scientific instruments in a nation's life. No longer is the scientific instrument an obscure device to be used only by the expert and to be understood only by the specialist. Rather, to the men and women of the factories and of the Fighting Services, it has become a familiar and essential tool, the use of which makes them, masters of complicated mechanisms and processes and enables them to achieve, both in the workshop and in combat, a most satisfying degree of precision. The nation has, in fact, become instrument-minded, and this should hearten those who, by the written and the spoken word, have in recent times pleaded for a more vigorous application of science to our national life. For the scientific instrument is one of the main vehicles by means of which the fruits of science are made available to the ordinary citizen, and the general public has, as never before, first-hand evidence of the value of the application of science as it appears concretely embodied in the scientific instrument of daily war-time use.
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THE BRITISH SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT INDUSTRY. Nature 152, 704–706 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/152704a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/152704a0