The AEI Long-Term Research Laboratory: an industrial experiment

Sir Arthur Fleming´s earliest plans for research suffered from the 1920 depression; they received a further setback in the 1930s. His concept of a laboratory for long-term research was realised in the late 1940s at Aldermaston Court, in the Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) Group, but at arms length from the Laboratories of the two constituent companies, Metropolitan-Vickers and British Thomson-Houston Co. Ltd. (BTH). The programmes and achievements are outlined, up to the time of closure due to the decline of AEI in the early 1960s. There is much to be learned from this account of how industrial research might benefit from more effective collaboration with, and better management of, the businesses that it serves.