Inheritance And Exploration: On American Corporation Laboratories In The Early20th Century

Development and establishment of corporation laboratory, which was one of majorfeature of American society in the20th century, had had a huge influence on thedevelopment of the United States. Being a medium of science into productivity, it firstappeared in Germany in the late half of the19thcentury, thanks to the development ofmodern science itself and the popularity of science education, and it was not until the early20thcentury that a surge of building corporation laboratories emerged in the United States.Firstly, the formation and initial development of corporation laboratories was aprocess of inheritance in the United States, which had two origins: one derived from thedevelopment of European science and the establishment of corporation laboratories,especially the influence of science education and corporation laboratories in Germany;the other from the development of native corporations and technology in the UnitedStates, mainly owing to the contribution of individual inventors and the U.S. governmentpolicies. Secondly, it was also a process of exploration. During the preliminaryexploration, as in Germany, it first appeared in the electrical industry and chemicalindustry closely related to physics and chemistry. At the very start, only a few companiesin these industry groups attempted to establish laboratories, among which GeneralElectric corporation laboratory in the electrical industry and DuPont laboratory in thechemical industry were in the vanguard of such attempts to build the Americancorporation laboratories. In contrast, the formation of General Electric corporationlaboratory contains relatively strong native features of the United States, while that ofDuPont laboratory involves more exotic elements. Both of them represent the two modesof formation of American corporation laboratories.The paper, on the basis of tracing the formation background of the U.S. corporationlaboratories as well as illustrating the process of the formation and exploration of GEcorporation laboratory and DuPont laboratory in detail, holds that both of the laboratoriescan be seen as a model and microcosm of inheritance and preliminary exploration courseof American corporation laboratories in the early20thcentury. It can be seen a traces ofearly development of American corporation laboratories from both of their growthprocess, along with their significant impact on American society.