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Solicitors Paul Verrico and Philip Crosbie consider how attempts to inflate the penalties imposed in fatal cases have failed when compared to the sanctions imposed on defendants convicted of other corporate crimes, such as those in the competition and data protection spheres. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Consideration of legislation, guidance and recent case law.

There is a significant divide between fines imposed for health and safety fatalities and those for competition/fraud offences. It is a sad fact that it is “cheaper” to cause the death of an employee than to engage in price‐fixing. It is difficult to see how this balance will be redressed without resorting to artificially inflating health and safety fines to a level on par with those offences previously mentioned.

The paper takes a close look at health and safety legislation.

Describes the life history of the British Food Journal, its changing editorial team, ownership and editorial focus. The authors have used much wider source material than the archives of the journal, now in its 100th year. The journal was always closely identified with the safety of food, its adulteration and the government’s duty to safeguard the public. The second section reviews the profession and role of the public analyst, in particular the history and development of the Society of Public Analysts. The next and longest section of the monograph is devoted to an interesting examination of food safety, nutrition and food manufacturing issues over the last 100 years. Many of the points raised are illustrated by excerpts from papers written in BFJ and included as Appendices to the monograph. Food irradiation was first raised as a subject in the journal in 1928! Bread and milk as staples in the British diet are looked at in some detail in terms of their ingredients and health properties. Some appendices have been included just for interest and provide brief snapshots of some of the main food concerns of the time, e.g. The Pure Food Society, the food we eat, food poisoning, a world food policy, the packaging of foods, food hygiene. Plus ça change ...

The purpose of this paper is to use a series of disruptive innovations in the 150‐year history of the US lighting industry to test whether two key innovation management theories retain their explanatory power as market structures change.

Historical case studies of four successive disruptive lighting innovations are used: incandescent light bulbs, fluorescent light bulbs, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFBs) and light emitting diodes (LEDs). Descriptions of each innovation include the new technologies, the evolving market structures, and how the innovating companies managed their risks during the transitions.

This paper finds that two contemporary theories on absorptive capacity and disruptive innovations retain validity and remain broadly applicable even as market structures change overtime from oligopoly and cartel to free market competition.

By juxtaposing historic incandescent and fluorescent bulb innovations in constrained market conditions with modern CFB and LED innovations in free market conditions, this paper expands understanding of the lighting history to include the past two decades. It also expands the applicability of innovation theories by showing that they apply to various and changing market structures.

WITH the passing of Easier the British librarian enters upon summer arrangements and a new financial year at the same time. There have been no severe complaints of undue financial “cutting” from public librarians; but there has been no very lusty jubilation caused by undue amplitude in appropriations. We may be grateful that in the general Stringency matters are not worse than they are. Our time will come. As for the summer work of libraries: of late there has been a tendency for the issues, during what are usually thought to be the slacker months, to approximate to those of winter time. This is not wholly, or even largely, due to the organization of holiday literature exhibitions and similar “added” activities, but it appears to be the result of increased reading habit. At the same time it must be remembered that last summer was not an out‐door one.

This paper aims to investigate the merit of Fred Taylor's claim that he did not conceive the notion of time study on his own. He insisted that he acquired it while a student at Phillips Exeter Academy and identified the particular individual to whom, he claimed, he owed his earliest exposure to time study – George A. “Bull” Wentworth.

Drawing on archival material, including a recently discovered letter by Taylor, this paper substantiates Taylor's claims regarding his association with Wentworth. By corroborating existing and new evidence of the Wentworth‐Taylor link, it probes into the nature and the scope of the influence of the “Old Bull” of Exeter on the father of scientific management.

Taylor did not conceive of time study on his own but acquired it early in his life via traceable socialization influences, many of which came from Wentworth. Such influences were both substantive and lasting: the residue of Wentworth's methodology is distinct in Taylor's early and later time study work. Taken together, both internal and external consistency of the evidence has led me to assert that it is plausible that Wentworth had a traceable and lasting socialization impact on Frederick Taylor.

This paper is a rare inquiry into the part of Taylor's life history that precedes his pioneering of the industrial, managerial, and economic applications of time study. It grounds the matter of Taylor's conceiving the time study idea into the context of his early‐in‐life socialization – an important subject left largely unexplored by Taylor's biographers and the historians of the scientific management movement.

THERE is a tendency to regard the industrial problems which face us as unique to British firms. That is a blinkered outlook in days when the commerce of thought is international and no country is insulated from another.

OUR good custom, as we deem it, to wish our readers a larger measure of happiness and success than heretofore we repeat for 1947. There are many signs in the libraries to give encouragement to the hope that they, the libraries, are now so well established everywhere that the old evils of complete disregard, penury and restriction will not recur and that, gradually but surely, the aims and the purpose for which we stand will be realized. That they may be so for all readers of The Library World is, we believe, the best possible New Year wish.