AN OPINION ON STANDARDIZATION
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N CONSIDERING the possibilities of standardiza tion in our own sphere, it is always valuable to know what is being done and thought by leaders of other industries faced with problems at all comparable. Mr. Edwin L. Orde, the president of the North-East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders, has, in a recent address, given a brief but useful resume of what has been done in the way of standardizing marine engines. The development has, of course, beea brought about primarily by the need for rapid replenishment of tonnage. The Institution has aimed at the standardization of what is described as a marine engine of normal cargo-vessel type. The movement has gained the support of all the kindred institutions, and a national committee, representing those bodies, as well as the Board of Trade and the classification societies, has been formed to takeup and thrash out various problems that have arisen. Mr. Orde commends the movement, less as a war measure than as a means of removing. one of the disabilities under which commercial engineering is can. ried on in this country. He recognizes the possibility that standardization may, to some extent, cramp originality of thought and design. He considers, owever, that originality can be turned towards the gradual improvement of methods of production of the standard product, and that, by the time something approaching perfection is reached, there will be room for big improvements by the adoption of a new type. The whole argument really pro-supposes the existence of an allied industry in which the same degree of standardization is not attempted. Applied to our own case, it would mean the complete standardization of the commercial-vehicle engine until someone else—say, the touring ear or motorcycle manufacturer—had established the soundness of a-new principle beyond dispute. In other words, the most commercial branch of each industry would standardize fully and work on price-reducing lines, leaving the other sections to do the job of the pioneer and experimenter. There is something to be said for the theory, which appears sound if not in every way attractive.