Catalogue description Department of Scientific and Industrial Research: Industrial Research Associations

In 1916, as a first step towards the furtherance of industrial research, the Advisory Council put forward a scheme for encouraging groups of firms to set up co-operative research associations in individual industries or groups of closely related industries which would qualify for financial assistance from the state. The proposal was accepted by the government and the 'Million Fund' was set up to support the plans; an Imperial Trust for the Encouragement of Scientific and Industrial Research was established to administer the fund. In 1917 a Government Scheme for Industrial Research was published.

When the fund was exhausted in 1932, financial assistance to individual research associations was supplied from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research vote. It was intended that ultimately the industrial research associations should work without government support, but this proved impossible to attain and the intention was formally abandoned at the end of the Second World War. By the 1960s forty industrial research associations existed.

The department, though maintaining a close liaison with them, exercised no control over their activities. Most of their resources were spent in carrying out programmes of research designed to improve the products, processes and efficiency of their industry, and in the dissemination of scientific information.