Much importance has been ascribed by historians from a number of traditions to co-operation between academic scientists and their counterparts in industry. However, while some knowledge of the extent of this 'science-industry relationship' in Britain has been gained, little of the historical work done so far has been sufficiently detailed to bring out the nature of this link - especially in the period after industrial research began to be formalised in separate departments dedicated to scientific research and development. Though a general overview of the situation nationwide has been gained, we have little evidence of how firms and universities cooperated in concrete instances in the changing context of post-WWI Britain. The present thesis aims to help £ill this gap by concentrating on Manchester, Britain's largest industrial region in the period from WWI to the 1960s, and investigating one of the two large sciencebased firms in the area to have had extensive contacts with the local university science departments. The thesis adopts an approach which focuses on the wide variety of cooperative ventures which were undertaken by local actors, in terms of the importance which they themselves attributed to them. This methodology underlines the multi-faceted nature of the 'science-industry relationship' which, in the case of Manchester, ranged from the scientific and educational, to the institutional and political. A number of new archival sources are used including the research department reports of Metropolitan Vickers Co. Ltd. and the personal papers of the scientists, industrialists and university managers who collaborated in furthering cooperation in scientific research in Manchester. It is demonstrated that a university-industrygovernment relationship existed from the very beginning of the period considered, but that it was initially largely informal, depending on individuals and the networks they formed, was varied, that it grew and developed only as and when concrete needs and opportunities arose and, far from being determined by government policy, was actually fundamental in shaping it.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:577538 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Cooper, Timothy |
| Publisher | University of Manchester |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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