Eight or nine years ago Palmer H. Craig was working for his doctors' degree at the University of Cincinnati. He had majored in physics so his thesis consisted chiefly of reports on numerous experiments. He spent weeks on experiments of different kinds. Some were failures, some were partially successful. He labored hard for he was interested in his work.
His thesis was accepted and he took his degree, doctor of philosophy. So far the story might apply to any one of hundreds of students who do the same thing in American colleges and universities year after year. But here it differs.
Dr. Craig, still young, is now the head of the physics department of Mercer University, Macon, Ga. He is rich, for he recently sold an invention he made while working on his doctor's thesis for $100,000. The invention is a device to take the place of battories and vacuum tubes on the ordinary radio receiving sets.
Probably it will revolutionize the entire radio supply manufacturing industry, for batteries and tubes add greatly to the expense of radio sets. And now the young professor is rich--because he enjoyed his work, because he used his brains and because he stumbled on the invention.
The moral or point to all this, if there is any, is that experimental theses are not necessarily impractical. And you seniors who have to write theses, bear in mind when you work on them that you may make a discovery or an invention while you are thus engaged that will make you rich for life.
Remember further that Dr. Craig used his brains on he wouldn't have made the discovery or known its value after he made it.--Ohio State Lantern.
Students who have disputed the educational value of routine work they have been obliged to undertake in scientific courses should find a degree of consolation in this editorial,--Note from Colgate Maroon.
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This Non-Stop Age