Invention and the Navy (Article)

Invention and the Navy was a paper read at a Meeting of the Institute of Patentees and Inventors by Hugh Clausen, O.B.E., I.S.O., B.Sc.(Eng.), formerly Senior Principal Scientific Officer at the Admiralty, at the Royal Society of Arts on Friday, 30 January, 1970 reprinted with acknowledgements. In the chair was Rear-Admiral Frank Elliott, O.B.E., who was Gunnery Oficer of H.M.S. Benbow throughout the Kaiser's war. Mr. Clausen served as a Lieutenant R.N.V.R. in that ship from I915 to 1919: he and Lieut.-Commander Elliott earned their 0.B.E.s for improvements in gunnery fire control gear. The talk is reproduced in The Naval Review, 1970-4, pp. 330-337.

Speech

THE matters I have to deal with, Invention and the Navy, cover such a vast field that they could not possibly be dealt with effectively in a single paper. I propose to survey very briefiy a number of inventions intimately associated with the Navy, especially some of those which have come within my personal knowledge; to make some comment upon Naval attitudes to invention; and last but not least, to examine the nature of invention and its relationship to design.

The Navy has always shown a strangely mixed attitude towards new inventions. In olden days there was, of course, less scope, and H.M.S. Victory, for example, refitting after Trafalgar, could have found pretty nearly all the facilities needed - except perhaps the size of the dry dock - in any of H.M. Dockyards of a hundred years earlier, just as ship's companies of those earlier days could have sailed and fought ships of a century later in time , with very litt!e practice.

Slow, sure development

Visiting HMS V,ictory in Portsmouth Yard I have always come away with a better impression of good design and fitness for purpose bhan I have derived from any of my countless visits to modern ships of war. Progress was slow, and the ships and their equipment were the result of many years of development to the stage when they were, winhin the state of the art of the time, finished and perfect, and there was little or nothing that could be usefully added or taken away. An early naval innovator, Admiral Vernon (1684-1757), after whom bhe Navy's Torpedo and Electrical Experimental Establishment was named, was famous for initiating new sailing rigs and tactics, but is best known for his institution of the rum ration, or grog, now apparently being done away with. I suppose all new inventions become absdete sooner or later! Even the good ones. In Nelson's tine there were, of course, excellent (for the time) instruments, tdescopes, sextants and other navigational instruments available, but things were, as a whole, left to the individual inventor Harrison A good example is the well known story d the ship's ahroaometer. The Admiralty, seeking a means for finding a hip's position at sea, had for long offered an award of f20,000, a vast sum in those days, part of which, after long shifts and struggles to get out of it, was awarded to Harrison, not an instrument maker but a carpenter by trade, whose marvellous chronometers are still keeping good time in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. He designed and made them himself, and the Government, thinking perhaps that there was some magic about it, withheld the award until a successful copy had been made by someone else. This was done by Larcombe Kendall, a well known watchmaker of the time. This, like the contemporary work of James Watt with his steam engine, was a personal effort as were the later developments of the chronometer, and many other things. The idea of combining such facilities as were available in a concerted effort, with adequate support, is a thing of very recent growth, since my own time in the engineering world, in fact. Every advance was 331 INVENTION AND THE NAVY formerly the result of indiv~dual effort rather than organised collaboration. This is still largely the case, as can be seen by more recent examples which I will deal with later. Even now, large research establishments often depend for their success on the luck of having one or two men of real genius, not by any means the head man, to inspire and guide the rat, and show how to express an inventor's ideas in practical ironmongery. The use of steam - and later of internal combustion engines - for propelling ships can hardly be called an invention, though innumerable inventions were involved in the development of the marine engine to its wonderful state of perfection in the 1900's, More it was overtaken by the steam turibine. This latter, foreshadowed by Hero of Alexandria about zero A.D., was the result of many inventions by many different men, each making his contrilbution, and the balance of importance between the '~nvention' and the means for carrying bhe idea into successful effect has never been simple. It is perhaps of increasing complexity now, with the inoreasing degree of specialisation, and separation cvf the different functions and activities concerned. The Patent OfEce, I believe, will accept for a patent either a new principle, or a new method of carrying an established principle into effect, provided that the means for carrying it into effect are fully declared in both cases. The locomotive torpedo The torpedo is a naval example of the complexity of the development of an invention. Originally just an explosive charge placed - somehow - close to a ship, it has passed through many stages of invention and design before reaching the (relative) perfection of the 21 inch heater torpedo of 1914, both British and German and the startling success of the Japanese torpedo in the second world war. The propulsion system where, in the older cold torpedo the cylinders were water jacketed to prevent 8hem from freezing up whilst in the heater torpedo the water jackets were to prevent them from burning out, the automatic steering with gyro control, t!he depth regulating gear, and methods of construction and manufacture have d l Involved a wide range of inventions. In much of this the situation was confused by the demands of secrecy. Robert Whitehead, working in Milan and under Austrian patronage at Fiume led to two, both originally almost identical, British and Gaman torpedoes, the latter being christened the 'Sohwarzkopf' to d~stingulsh it from the Whitehead. The efforts of Whitehead and Obry, a famous Austrian enigineer, to keep the controlling gear secret whilst at the same time trying to sekl the idea to navies which insisted on both internal full knowledge combined with external secrecy became a bit awkward at times. Gyro compass The gyro com'pss provided a vast field for patents and inventions, for rivalries and law suits &tween various claimants. The directional gyro had been used in torpedos to control a short run, but to give a true North continuously for navigation was another story, and demanded mudh more effort. The gunnery master gyro, to give a real precision azimuth control was even more severe. The ultimate prize, if it could be won, seemed dazzling, and the struggles and rivalries, in which a sort of mathematical mysticism was apparent, were reminiscent of those around the philosopher's stone of The Middle Ages. The first one used in the British Navy was the German Anschutz, originally of German manufacture hut later made by Elliott Bros. under licence. Though these were carried to a very high degree of perfection in later marks in Germany, we were not satisfied witih them, and they were all replaced by American Sperry compasses. first of American manufacture and later made here under licence. I was shlipmates with both types in the first world war, and for some time was responsible for their maintenance. The Brown gyro compass was tried by the Navy but never widely adopted. Brawn also produced a 'slow wanderer' com~pass, for real precision work, with an occasional check from a north seeker. Great hapes INVENTION AND THE NAVY 337. were placed on these for gunnery controls at the time, but I do not think that they got very far, though the principles had useful applications elsewhere. S. G. Brown was a remarkaible man whom I knew fairly wll ; quite a genius in fact, in invention and design. He had been a laboratory assistant to Professor Perry, who was then, wibh Lord Kelvin, our national gyro expert. He not only invented his m type of sensitive element and follow up system, he designed it in all its detail, and built it hirneslf, with his own hands. There was some lovely design work in it, and in the stepper motors and transmitters for the remote receivers, which I have always admired. It had a wide use in the merchant navy. Though he had no formal academic qualifications he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Here is a very particular case of the balance between the linventor and the designer. It should be clearly understood by all budding inventors that even when they have got their final specification filed this is only the beginning. The detail design and manufacture, on which success w211 ultimately depend, may both need equal or higher mental and intellectual qualities than the 'invention'. I can illustrate thls by another inventor in the gyro compass field, and as those concerned are now dead I can give names. Sir James Henderson who, when I joined the Admiralty, was Adviser on gyroscoplic equipment, was a brilliant physicist. His analvtical and mathematical work was often realfy brilliant, but he had no sense of mechanical design at all. He also had the bad luck of being unable to recruit first class people to help him with the design work. There were perhaps reasons for this: he seemed to me to work on the principle of 'heads I win, tails you lose'. Any failure of his material was always attributed to poor design. This may have been true, but he ought to have known this before manufacture in numbers was put in hand. The inventor who expects other people to carry out his ideas for him in the way of detail design will always be in trouble. He need not, as Harpison and S. G. Brown did, make the whole trial gear himself personally but, if he is a real 'inventor', he must be able to advance the state of the art - if need be - so as to enable it to carry out htis ideas. Invention is not the end If he has not the techn~cal abillty to do this there are courses open to him. He can get down to it, learn from others, and try himself, as I have known men do. The highest value he may derive from this is a due sense of humility. Another way is to try to find some other man with the necessary abilities wlho is equally keen on the idea, and collaborate with him on a partnemhip basis. The idea may be brilliant, but the quality of the product dapends on the detail design, and on the ability to embody in this, to an opthum extent, the results of experiment and trial, and service use. The place where quality is injected into the product is on the drawing board, and the instrument used for injecting it is a pencil. Who is it who ho'lds - or guides in detail - this pencil? There is a grave lack of a tradition of really good precision engineering design (on whiuh everything else depends) in our higher educational, industrial, and managerial circles. I was never actively concerned in fihe design d the gyro compass, but I was very dependent on it to provide the stable azimuth as a basis for the gunnery fire control system, with which I was very intimately concerned. The gun-fire control system was perhaps an even more complex battle ground of rival personalities, systems, inventions and patents than rhe gyro compass. The combination of the two widens the field still further. Like any other aspect of naval activity, its weapons give wide soope for invention. Naval guns were, I believe, used at the Battle of Sluys, in Edward 111's time. They must have been pretty crude, but development has gone on, at varying speed, but without much real change until Victorian engineering development made great strides possilble. The leaders here were those great engineers Joseph Whitworth and Wikliam Armstrong, who subsequently combined. This led to the very great extension of the ranges at which guns could be effectively used, and to means for increasing this 333 INVENTION AND THE NAVY effeotiveness. The fixed mounting guns ot land artillery could be used effectively at very long ranges, but firing from a moving ship at a moving target was quite another story. Fire control It was m 1900 that Arthur H. Pollen, a very energetic and versatile man of many activities and interests, was a visitor as a guest of the Captain on one of HM ships in the Mediterranean. He was interested to see that 'battle practice' was being carried out at about a quarter of the effective range of the guns, at a stationary target. He was convinced that this range could be vastly mcreased by the use of an accurate control system, and he badgered the authorities unmercifully to do something about it. He formed a company - the Argo Company - to develop his ideas, some of which were given trials in HM ships at various times between 1902 and 1914. He had recruited a very powerful design team, including Isherwood and Landstad, both of whom I knew later. They produced a complete fire control system part of which was fitted in one off the Battle Squadrons of the Grand Fleet. It was far superior in execution - though with some disadvantages in use - to the somewhat later Dreyer f i e contra1 system fitted in the other Grand Fleet ships. This was produced by the London firm of Elliott Bros., where Mr. (later Sir Keith) Elljhinstone collaborated with Commander (later Admiral) Dreyer In the development. The difficulties and squablbles between the protagonists of these two systems, is a sorry story which I cannot go into in detail, though it constitutes an important chapter in the history of Invention and the Navy. Lack of collsllboration put back the development of precision navd gunnery for many years. It would have been much better to have given full scope for thje development of both, in fair competition, if that were possible. 1 suppose one of the reasons for slmv progress, and many of the now apparen'tly unnecessary difficulties, was that there was, at the time, no real competent authority - in the professional sense - to deal wlth technical development. 'This led to such roundabout ways - or pe~hapss hort cuts - as Mr. Pollen writing desperate letters to W~nston Churchill, then First Lord d the Admiralty, pleading for better facilities for trials of his fire control system. 'Fhe lack of channels for the development of new ideas, and the resulting frustrations and difficulties of personal effort appears agaln and again. An earlier example was the 'battle of the guns' fought between Armstrong and Whitworth, largely carried on m letters published in The Times in bhe 1860's and 70's. A similar lack of what one m~ght call professional competence in positions oi authority appears in the story of the illfated HMS Captain, a steam driven turret ship of unusual design with an extremely low freeboard, to which the Admirdty authorities also insisted on having a mplete rig of heavy masts and sails. She was lost in a storm, with few, if any survivors: a fate whiuh a little hfindsight showed to have been inevitable. Secrecy One instance of the kind of diffimlties which c r q up in the development of naval material is the case of what became known as the Henderson firing gear. A very dble Austrian engineer, Olbry, whom we have met before, had developed an aroifidal horizon, to give the instant of firing when the horizon was obscured. This was seen, in Austria, by an Admiralty representative (Commander Dreyer, I bdieve) and recommended for adoption. Obry, however, insisted that as the mechanism was secret it could only be supplied in a sealed case, to be sent back to the makers for any repairs or adjustments. We could noft, of course, acoapt any fighting material which we could not keep in repair ourselves, and turned the idea down, at the same time trying to produce a home made substitute. This was designed by Sir James Henderson and made by Elliott Bros., just in time, but only just, for 1915. Designed and made In a hu~ryi,t gave difficulties in use. The idea was good, but the design was not up to the needs. The only available actual gym INVENTION AND THE NAVY 3 34 wheel was the An,schutz type which was not really suitable. An instance olf the other thmg, where rhe engineering design of the hardware was outstandingly good, though it suffered from some limitations in the basic idea, was the director firing gear as fitted in the Grand Fleet just before and during the 1914 war. The naval man behind this was Admiral Sir Percy Scott who, perhaps more than anyone else, was the prime stimulant to naval gunnery efficiency. The underlying principle was not new, having been used in Nelson's time, when the guns of a battery were all set to the same dewa'tim and fired together by signal from the one which had ~ t s sights set for the range. As fitted in modern ships there was, of course, much more in it than that, though the principle was the same. This gear, designed by a genius of a man at Vickers, Arthur Perham, whom I met later at the Admiralty, was the finest example of good design work over a wide range that I have ever seen, bar none. I do not suppose that any oif it survives, more's the pity. Even by modem standards it was quite outstanding, and to create it from nothing, so to speak, which was the case as there was nothing to develop it from, was remarkable. I learned a lot from it, as I did from other designers of the time. Design When after the First World War, the Admiralty were forming a new section to deal specifically with the design of fire control gear - for the first time - Is'herwood, Pollen's chief design man, who was on Me Committee, brought along Landstad, his own man, so I did not get on to that work until later. It was just as well for all concerned. I hadn't enough experience then, but, working next door, on allied fire control communication material, I learned enough to take over from them after the completion of the first generation of post war fire control ships, when the demand which later formed the nucleus of an impolrtant branch of the Electrical Engineering Department (afterwards formed into a naval Branch) and later still merged into the Engineering Bran&, is of some mterest. It has been written up by two of its senior members, but I do not suppose it will ever be published. It is not my place to deal with it here. I had too close a personal connection with it. I have mentioned a few firms to whom the Admiralty went in searuh of talent to design and make its instruments, the Argo Company af Pollen, which had the benefit of Isherwood's design talent and the fine craftsmans'hip of Thomas Cook, of York, Messrs. Vickers, who approached our fine precision mechanical work from the heavy engineering end, and Elliott Bros., who got there from the fine scientific instrument making end. There were several @thers, perhaps the most notable being Masrs. Barr and Stroud, world fannous for rangefinders and associated gear. I knem both Dr. Barr and Dr. Stroud well. They were both teaching engineening, and had comlbined to answer an advertisement m The Times in 1888 announcing a competition for a rangefinder for army use. The history of the firm's development from these small beginnings to their 30 foot optical rangefinders makes a fine story, too long to go into here. Another famous firm is Evershed and Vigndes, originally only concerned with electrical instruments. Evershed produced a balanced circuit type of transmission of information which was very suocess'fully used through the Navy until it was superseded by elements of the magslip or synchro type after the last War. Their first instrument, a helm indicator, for showing the rudder position on the ship's navigating bridge, was filtted in 1895 or thereabouts. The order from my present Ohairman, then sitting in the director tower, and passed by me, in the transmitting station, to the gun turrets: 'Follow Evershed' revives many naval memories. Alfred Graham, who was for something simpler and cheaper specialised in loud speaking naval telephone that would do much the same rhing. equipment was another firm \hioh did The history olf that small section, which much g o d work for the Navy both before was formed in the Admiralty in 1920, and and after the 1914 war. 335 INVENTION AND THE NAVY Secrecy overdone When demand for these naval gunnery instruments was growing, say from 1900 onwards, although there was a very fine tradition of mathematical and scientiiic instrument work, the kind of material needed for naval or military use had no real broadly based tradition behind it of how such things should be designed and made. The process was slow, and encumbered by demands of official swrecy. I often think that this was overdone. More harm can easily be done by withholding information from people who could have made a usdul contribution than would have ken done by disclosure to a possible national rival. I could quote many instances. In any case the basic knowledge, the scientific bheory, cannot be kept secret. Science is completely international. On the other hand, the technology, the practical know-how, the ability to design and make the material which will carry out the known principles really wd1 is not international at all. It depends on personal talents. rt is not by any means a matter of how muah money is invested in it. Over and over again I have came across cases - I still come across them - where we know everything about the theory, and have plenty of money to put into it, but have never developed the know-how, the practical engineering design side of the thing at an adequate level in the o~ganisations concerned. This is all part of our national neglect of the art of engineering at the higher levels of educational, industrial and managerial activities. The classic case is, I suppose, the watchmaking industry. Incidentally one of the finest possible export activities. The raw materials of a fine watch movement, which sells for pounds, prolbably do not cost as many pence - inuluding the jewels. In the 1860's we dominated world markets in watches in much the same way as the Swiss do now, but by about 1912 the industry had practically disappeared. The reason is simple. There is relatively little in making watchpi ihe real problem is in the design an-' manufacture of the high precision automatic machine tools which can turn out component parts with sufficient accuracy for random assembly to give good timekeeping. These industrial arts, which form the basis of industrial prosperity, have always been negleated at our higher levels, and, as I have remarked before, the present tendencies in the organisations concerned seem to be going in the wrong direotion for recovery. Management A g o d instance of this is the exaggerated emphasis now placed on 'management', as if this were something that could be considered separately from uhe activity that is being managed. Good management and organisation are naturally very necessary, but the zdvity that is being managed is 04 even greater importance. It demands equal - if not higher - human qualities. The situation as regards bhis is being made mwe by the efforts d our prdessional institutions and higher ed~vcational establishments in their efforts to oreate 3 clear distinction between professional engineers and technicians. By doing so they are depriving the former of the ability to carry out their duties properly - to lead as well as to manage the teahnician - so that both, and the country as a whole, can enjoy the benefits of a higher state of development of the art of engineering. The inventm A point I want to mphmlse is the real meaning of ghe word 'inventor', and w he relations between the man who thinks of an idea and the man - or men - who carry it through to a practical stage of development. My experience has invariably been that the latter is a far more severe, intractable, and demanding profMern than the former, and is not merely a matter of providing Ohe necessary financial support. The creative idea may be a real 'brain wave', but it can be done by one man in his spare time, or sitting in a deck chair in the garden on Sunday afternoon. The progress to reality, the development from bare ideas to useful ironmongery, may involve hundreds, if not thousands, of. people, working to a concerted end, supervised and co-ordinated by - whom? Does the inventor guMe and control the lay-out drawings, the detailing and process instructions required to raise the 'state of the art' INVENTION AND THE NAVY 335 to the stage at whwh ~t can cope wlth his Ideas and demands? If not - who does! The case of the inventor who has an idea but is not capable of expressmg it m really effect~ve form is hard. But unless he can express it in effective form, either by making ~t himself, or by doing the deslgn work h~mself in effective form, so that the thlng could be made, with confidence, In accordance w~th his drawlngs and instructions, it IS extremely difficult for him to convince knowledgeable people that the idea is a good one. If he has to rely on someone else to 'lick his ideas into pract~ca'l worklng form' he must not expect that th~ses sential work can be relegated to a lower level. He must be able to supervise this work himself, and should not blame his draughtsman for not being able to make up for What are really his own deficiencies. In the course of a long worklng lifetime m - and very closely associated with - the engineering industry and the Navy, 1 have met, admired, cursed, collaborated w~th, and suffered from, many kinds of Inventors. In every case that 1 can think of the design of the actual hardware has been a more difficult and demanding problem than the invention, as sudh, or the idea behlnd it, evcn in the case of the relatively \m.zll scale material that I have been assoc~ atedw ith. In the case of major operations such as steel manufacture, or gas tufibines, this is much more so. Inventors who complain of the difficulty of putting their ideas over should remember this. They should also remember that words are an utterly inadequate medium for the transfer of thought in developing from ideas to ironmongery. Models may be of value in helping to explain how an idea works, and helping others to understand it, but that is all. The only thing that really counts is the con~plete set of detail worklng draw~ngs and process instructions, to which the thing can be made with confidence in the result. The design is the critical matter, and the draughtsman or designer who does this work must not be cons~dercd as the equivalent of the typist who puts into tidy form the manuscript scrawl of the author. He is more llke Shaltespeare's poet : 'and as imagination bodies forth the form of things unknown the poet's pen turns them to shapes. and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name'. Pragress Apart from rhe great earller changes involved in the turn over frcm sail to steam propulsion - which is far too wide a subject for me to touch on - the period from 1904 to 1914 was probably the time of the most raplid development of naval material either before or since. It included that well known election party cry: 'We want eight, and we won't wait'. This was ellat capital, superdreadnought ships, to be laid dolwn in the one year's buildlng programme! Th~s astonishing thing was done, and those ships were some of those which fought at Jutland in 1916. Since the last war, however, I suppme that progress may have been even more rapid - though bhe quantity of material made has been very much less - but I could not deal with these matters. even if I knew what was going on. Progress is probably more rap~d than it was during my active time. In earlier days, though the difficulties of carrying an invention into effect were prolbably greater than now, the process was simpler. The inventor usually played the major part in carrylng out the whole project, as was tlhe case with James Watt with the condensing steam engine. He not only did the design work and made his models himself ; he controlled the manufacture under his own personal supervision. He had to. There was no one else who could have done it. Today few inventors can carry a major project througll themselves. They are usually dependent on a very well developed 'state of the art', though there are not lacking men for whom the current state of the art is not adequate to fulfil their ideas. They have to ralse the whole standard of technique 5omehow, to enable their ideas to materialise. These msn are the real leaders. This usually - though not always - means getting financial and moral support from the many activities concerned. Instances are the Parsons Steam Turbine and the Whittle Jet Engine. I do nolt think anyone could have been said to have 'i~avented' either the torpedo or the gyro compasr, very important ins'tances 337 INVENTION AND THE NAVY of naval material. The numbcr of separate inventions concerned with these two Instances 1s just colossal. A few names, however, the Austr~an Obry and Robert Whlteheadl for the torpedo m the 1870's, and Sperry and Anschutz for the gyro compass In more recent t~mes, do stand out as hav~ng made the most ~mportant conltrlbutlons to the state of ehe art, wh~ch is st111 developing. Another great name, Dr. Draper, of MIT inspired and led the work on constrained gyros whlch led to the present incredible accuracy of submarine and space 'meritia nav~gatlon'. This is st111 developing. It was referred to m The Time5 today. Ni~ts and bolts! The mixed attitude of the Navy towards its fight~ng material can best be indicated, I think, by the deprecatory rsmark 1 have often heard about some officer who is redly mterels'ted in improvement in it: 'Oh, yes, so and so is a very good nuts and bolts man'. Admibtedly this interest in material ~namers may not be regarded as the naval officer's most important characteristic. It ofiten stands in the way of his naval career. In many cases such a man is sacrificing himself to make up for the deficiencies of the whole omisation, as someone, somewhere, at a pretty high level In the h~eramhy, with a very high level of user knowledge and prolfesslonal technical compe'tence must attend to these matters if useful progress is to be made. My long series of poslt war articles on these matters In the Naval Review laid great stress on the damage done by this imbalance between the user and the designer of navail fighting material. Would Admiral Vernon's contemporaries have referred to him as a good nuts and bolts (or masts and sails) man? This neglect of real competent attentlon to the quality of its material Which I have described as naval weakness may be possibly only one aspect of a characteristic social weakness in the whole coun'try: a great respect for the 'scientist' or the 'inventor' combined with a most remarkable l a ~ kof respect for the 'nuts and bolts man' who turns the invention into a practical worklng form. The present shortage of men who can do this klnd of work well is not at all surpris~ng. It 1s a drect result of the lack of appreciat~on by &e country as a whole of this kind of activity. This leads to doubts as to our economic prospects. The Feilden Report of 1963 deserves careful study. The lessons that I see for h e future are, that over-emphas~so n 'research' has dlverted attentlon from the means for carrylng the research to the sltage of useful reliable hardware. The results of th~sh ave been serious. To recover we need to reverse some current trends, suoh as the attempt by universities and professional institutions to make a clear cut distinct~on between profess~ onal engineers and technicians. The greater must include the less, and unless a man is or has been a very good technician he 1s very unlikely to be a good engineer. Science can do notihing unless supported by engineer~ng at an adequate level. The importance of 'management' as a thing in its own rlght, apart from professional competence in the actlvity be~ng managed, has ibeen exaggerated; and important decisions are taken by men ait an administrative level who are not capable d exercising a right judgement as to rhe effect of the~r deoiions. The simple fact is that adequate attentlon must be paid to all aspects of the product, including setling it, at all levels of the organisation concerned. If thls 1s done the profit, whether opera'tional or financial, 1s almost automatic, as a kind of by-product. On this warning note I will pipe down, leaving time for discussion. If it seems that I have only been dealing with - in Wordsworth's words : 'Old, unhappy, far off things and battles long ago' ~t must be remembered that human nature only changes slowly - if at all - and that, measured in these terms the twenty-five year? back to the last war, and the fifty-five years back to the other one, are really quilte briaf per~ods.