May 1960: Tracking the UK's tech transfer

Established as an irregular section of the magazine, the feature sought to look at the industrial value of the UK’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), which administered BRE, NEL, and TRL among others before being disbanded in 1965.

“Our method is to visit a laboratory and to ask its director to bring to our attention recently published papers describing its researches within some more or less limited field, “ said The Engineer. “We then summarise the papers concerned…ask for and receive the concurrence of the laboratory that the summaries do fairly represent the contents of the papers and send out proofs of this material to a number of firms which we think may have made use of the information.”

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The Engineer continued: “We follow up in person, asking for comments and, more especially, for particulars of any real hardware produced by the firm, the design of which has been influenced directly or indirectly by the work of the laboratory and for information about any work the firm may have carried out itself in the same field, and so forth. The resultant report, which has to be approved by the firm before it gets printed, represents as accurately as we can manage what the representatives of the firm said to us. We ourselves express no opinions.”