The Industrialization of Invention: A Case Study from the German Chemical Industry

IN THE LAST DECADES of the nineteenth century the relationship between science and industry changed in a decisive way. Invention was industrialized. Large company laboratories were set up. The consulting scientist and the scientific entrepreneur were replaced by the salaried industrial research worker. Applied science became a driving force for technical development and economic growth.' The German chemical industry has often served as the outstanding example of an early science-based enterprise. In particular, it has become commonplace to stress the importance of research for the rise to world supremacy of German dye manufacturers. But while this truism has been readily accepted, the manner in which science was turned into a productive force has not been subject to detailed investigation. "Because it turns out, ex post," Paul M. Hohenberg wrote in 1967, "that the gamble was a good one for the chemical industry in 19th-century Europe, identifying the sources of the industry's growth reduces largely to finding the factors affecting the decisions to take the gamble." The prevalence of this attitude has meant that apart from the work of John J. Beer, little is known about industrial research in the German chemical industry up to 1914.2 The first small dyestuffs firms were founded in several western European countries in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Although the number of workers employed and the amount of capital invested always remained small as compared with older ventures such as textiles, coal, or iron, the rise of the dye industry was remarkable in at least two ways. First, dye manufacturing was the prototype of a new type of industry based on science. Second, Germany dominated the manufacture of dye-