RIASSUNTO
ABSTRACT
The range of engineering disciplines involved in offshore technology illustrates ,the requirement for a multidiscipline approach, and arising from this the need for new industrial groupings;. the relevance of other aspects of commerce - banking and insurance is also reviewed. The grouping mechanism is illustrated by reference to common factors in research and development in ocean technology, and by example of the United Kingdom Under water Engineering Group which carries out oceanological R&D, funded jointly by over 50 industrial undertakings and by the UK Government. The overall subject is treated from an internationally point of view.
THE PROBLEMS
The sheer scale of what we seek to do in the oceans dictates above all else the manner of operations in this hostile environment, and therefore the types of organisations which carry out these operations. It is this same scale which requires co-operation in research and development - in contrast to the commercial security which is the normal basis of research and development work in a competitive industrial society. Without co-operation the resources of men and equipment will be spread too thinly for useful progress to be made on a sufficiently broad front or, what in many ways is worse, the same restricted set of topics may be progressed in a number of different places. There is neither the time nor the money for continuing to re-invent the wheels.
Furthermore underwater technology involves many branches of engineering mechanical, marine, civil, aeronautical all and more have their place. But the man who succeeds in this sphere needs to be first and foremost ""an engineer"" in the nineteenth century meaning of the term. The present divisions - where the obtuse terminology of a particular discipline causes one engineer to be unable to talk to another - are as great a hindrance to progress as any difference in mother tongues. It is also worth remarking on the isolationism of the average engineer with respect to commercial life and his inadequate acquaintance with, for example, the banking and insurance world, which is yet another barrier to be broken down. In very few Cases do we see the typical present day engineer taking full note of the parts to be played by the financial institutions.
The requirement that calls for the ""complete engineer"" calls also for the complete engineering industrial unit. The general trend is for industrial organisations which operate in fields related to underwater technology to diversify into it. In America the advanced technology of the aerospace companies has already found place under water and this industry has been responsible for building many of the American submersibles.