Research Work Forms Educational Foundation

A few years ago, the story goes, an M.I.T. undergraduate boarded a streetcar and asked the motorman to change a five-dollar bill. Meanwhile several of his friends welded the lead wheels of the car to the track, in an experimental application of thermite welding.

Their unique experiment of mixing iron oxide and aluminum powder may not have added as much to the advancement of knowledge as some other M.I.T. research, but their application of lecture-room principles to concrete situations was consistent with the Institute's philosophy of making research an important part of education.

On the undergraduate level, students rarely get an opportunity to participate in advanced research. But the applied learning of graduate students and faculty members has built up a research program which has made many important contributions to the nation's scientific progress.

From discoveries made in part at M.I.T. in electronics computing mechanisms, a large and thriving new industry has grown up in the Greater Boston area, still closely integrated with basic research at the Institute. As each new scientific laboratory or factory arises around Cambridge, M.I.T. grows important as a supplier of the skills and knowledge at the heart of the new product.

Military Research

Many of these new devices--especially radio and television equipment--grew out of military research conducted at M.I.T. during the war. While some research at the Institute is specifically directed toward industrial development, today the national defense program has requistioned most of M.I.T.'s available talent. Even basic research, in its military applications, has become highly important for defense.

Government-sponsored projects at the Institute today involve an annual expenditure of approximately 28 million dollars. Last year's academic budget was just under 15 million dollars. Government expenditures were principally divided among three classified projects--the Instrumentation Laboratory at the Institute, operations evaluation for the Navy Department in Washington, and Bedford's Lincoln Project.

Last month, when newsmen were admitted through the heavy security net around the Lincoln Laboratories, they saw for the first time the M.I.T.-developed SAGE warning system--"semi-automatic ground environment." Designed to eliminate human errors in data-processing, Project Lincoln's electronic devices assemble and evaluate battle information, and even direct the attack of interceptors. With the Bedford installation serving as a prototype coordinating the air defense of New England, 32 similar centers are projected for the United States and Canada.

Project Lincoln, employing over 1800 M.I.T. technicians, is just one of over 200 government-sponsored projects administered by the Institute's Division of Defense Laboratories. At the same time 45 industrial projects were carried on under the Division of Industrial Cooperation.

Calculator Center

One of the areas where M.I.T. research has been most successful has been in the development of digital computers and other instrumentation devices. War-time discoveries in circuit theories led to the development of increasingly complicated calculators. Recent research includes work on a machine that will translate languages and turn speech into writing. As a memorial to the Institute's ninth president, Dr. Karl T. Compton, a center in which all of M.I.T.'s calculators will be concentrated is under construction.

Other significant discoveries include a method of long-distance telecasting by which microwaves are bounced against the ionosphere and reflected, extending the range of transmission. Discoveries about the structure of the atom made with M.I.T.'s cyclotron and synchrotron have important applications in medical and X-ray research.

Any summary of original experimentation at M.I.T., unless presented as a project report, cannot hope to rise above the superficial, but at least it can point to the tremendous comlexity and significance of the Institute's research program.