Proceeding Articles

For over a hundred years, the Japanese pulp and paper industry, which dates back to 1873, has had to struggle with three major problems.

For the first 40 years, it had to compete with traditional hand-sheet making. The introduction of mass-production technology from abroad allowed the machine-made paper industry to surpass hand-sheet production.

The particular role played by a contract research laboratory such as Battelle will be examined. This role is affected by the different approaches which a contract research laboratory has necessarily to adopt. Specific single-company sponsored research, as opposed to government or multi-company programmes, is seldom fundamental. However, the advantages of using a nonspecialised laboratory to address specialised problems are several, and examples will be given of the results which can be obtained in this context.

Technical Research as a formalised departmental activity at Beloit was begun in approximately 1957, with instructions from Mr. Lloyd Hornbostel, Vice-President of Engineering, to set up a Research Department.

Innovation, revolutionary change, is a major element of economic growth and brings about changes in productivity, employment and competitiveness, nationally and internationally. The prime requirement for innovation is existing or latent market need. R & D is not a sufficient component in itself to bring about innovation. Fundamental research work is probably most cost-effective if directed towards solving the problems of evolutionary change.

Revolutionary innovation challenges the established order, changes patterns of work, makes capital plant redundant and sometimes eliminates the whole market for certain products. Generally it involves risks and time-scales far beyond those normally handled in a company. Increasingly it requires large amounts of revenue and capital.

To overcome these obstacles to innovation requires a strong sense of purpose in an organisation and strong direction of research activity. Given our own industry’s pitiful profit record Government support may be necessary. However, stronger funding of a smaller number of projects should be the aim.

The necessities and possibilities of companies to do research work essentially depend on the supply of raw material, on the market facts, on product grades and production structure, and on the financial means available.

The implementation of research and development activities of Feldmuhle Aktiengesellschaft with its 8 paper and board mills in Germany, with a capacity of 1.2 million tons, is discussed.

The paper refers to various aspects of the research organisation, including personnel and the scope of the different functions and their co-ordination within the enterprise. It emphasises the long-term planning of research and development projects, and describes how the costs involved are allocated to the various divisions of the company. Finally, some examples of successful research work are given.

About five years ago, signs began appearing that economic growth in the United States was losing its vitality. In an economy as complex as that of the US it is not always easy to distinguish symptoms from causes. Industrial innovation has long been recognised as the engine of the American economy, and it was clear that this loss of power could not be explained simply in terms of OPEC and the rapid rise in the cost of energy. Many measures of the “State of Innovations” have shown signs of a downturn. President Carter initiated a cabinet-level study of the extent to which government regulation might be to blame, and numerous other groups have analysed the extent to which other factors have contributed to the decline.

In the following remarks I will use the terms “research” or “fundamental research” interchangeably to denote the process of generating new insights or knowledge about the physical world at all levels of sophistication by use of the scientific method. In contrast, I will use the word “development” to cover all activities associated with the application of knowledge for beneficial purposes of a commercial nature. This is in line with Mr. Place who earlier this week suggested that, phrased in the business context, “research” is like creating an asset while “development” is putting that asset to work.

Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to the sixth fundamental research symposium.

Over 20 years ago Dr Rance had an idea. Simply stated, he believed that bringing together paper scientists from all over the world to present the results of their work, to discuss common interests and to establish personal contacts, would result in the more rapid advance of paper science, and, hence, improve the profitability of the industry within which we work.

Protocol demands that I say what a great honour it is to have been invited to give the opening address today. But indeed I would say that without the demand of protocol, since I am overawed by the long list of distinguished guest speakers who have earlier filled this role, including, at the last Oxford Symposium, a much beloved great man of science, the late Sir Lawrence Bragg. It is indeed a great honour for me to join their ranks, an honour only slightly dimmed by the sotto voce comment of our Programme Secretary, who greeted the new of my acceptable of the invitation to speak with the remark: ‘an excellent choice – at least we can keep him under control and make him keep to the time-table.’

In the water-swollen state, water is the major component of the cell wall of a pulp fibre-its amount often exceeding that of the sum of the other components. How this amount of water is accommodated in the cell wall obviously has a great bearing on the structure of the solid phase and the properties of the wet fibre as a whole.

It is proposed that in the wall of the wood fibre, water is held in a micro-porous gel of hemicelluloses and lignin which is distributed as fine platelets within a cellulose skeleton consisting of much distorted lamellae. As the lignin and hemicelluloses are removed by pulping, the amount of water in the wall increases as water fully occupies the spaces previously shared with these components. The subsequent mechanical action of beating is visualised as causing the slit-like spaces occupied by water to progressively link up and the coarser lamella separations to enter the range of visibility by optical microscopy. The entry of additional water into the cell wall, as induced by pulping or mechanical action, is believed by its delaminating action to bring about plasticisation of the wood fibre, a necessary prerequisite to papermaking.