ABSTRACT
Figure 9.1 The World Meteorological Organization of 1950 98 Figure 9.2 Establishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO) (1967) 105 Figure 9.3 Patent offices for the registration of inventions 106
The need for knowledge: statistical congresses
The advancement of modern industry and the expansion of commerce and transport made governments conscious of the need for general and comparable scientific knowledge about the Earth, the seas, the time, the condition of the soil and the weather. To provide a reliable basis for government action, it was necessary to conduct investigations in nearly every branch of their administrative activities. Private and public multilateral conferences and organizations proved outstanding ways to provide such knowledge, although national interests sometimes surfaced as obstacles to progress. From 1853 onwards international statistical congresses, with representatives from both science and governments participating, were being organized to improve the science of statistics. In 1885 the private International Statistical Institute was established in The Hague. When Henri Dunant was setting up the International Red Cross in 1863, he first visited the international statistical congress in Berlin, where he attended the fourth section. Numerous civilian and military doctors in this section were concerned with comparative health and mortality statistics. Dunant learned about the latest scientific developments and, equally importantly, he made contacts with delegates, promoting his ideas and inviting influential people to attend the upcoming Red Cross conference in Geneva. By the end of the conference he had provisional acceptances from a number of states (Finnemore 1996, 76-77).
