ABSTRACT
Francis Bacon has often been criticized for his suggestion that quite ordinary people should be able to undertake scientific research. It was not unfitting that the nineteenth century opened in England with the foundation of the, apparently quite Baconian, Royal Institution. The Royal Institution reflected the temper and traditions of English science: those of the amateur or devotee. The German system was set up in very conscious opposition to the French. In 1808 Napoleon had unified all higher education in France under one central university. The adoption of the simplest laboratory techniques by British industry began, it seems, only after the Exhibition of 1851. Scientific research, in the form of an attack on one or two definite problems, to be wound up when the problems are solved, has been carried on in industry for a long time; there was, indeed, much of it during the eighteenth century.
