Something Ventured

A new and unusual company got an unprecedented blessing from the Securities & Exchange Commission last week. The new company: American Research & Development Corp., formed in June by a group of New England businessmen, educators and scientists to furnish capital for the development of new enterprises, new processes, and new products.

The SEC's blessing, without which the new company could not raise the $5,000,000 it wants, gave it special permission to offer its stock (200,000 shares at $25 a share) to investment companies as well as to the general public.

The sponsors of American Research got together because they felt that standard investment companies and individuals were too thoroughly hobbled by Government restrictions and taxes to put up the risk capital industry needs. What was needed, they decided, was an organization that could combine a pool of venture capital with the know-how to put the money into the right investments.

American Research will get its technical advice from a board of advisers headed by Brigadier General Georges F. Doriot, who resigns this month as Deputy Director of the Research and Development Division of the War Department General Staff. Also on the board are three top-drawer men from M.I.T.: President Karl T. Compton, Edwin R. Gilliland, and Jerome Clarke Hunsaker. The board of directors includes Ralph E. Flanders, board chairman of Jones & Lamson Machine Co. (who will also serve temporarily as president of the company); Bradley Dewey, onetime Rubber Administrator, now president of Dewey & Almy Chemical Co.; and Ira Mosher, chairman of the board of the National Association of Manufacturers.

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