A standalone lab can be good to have. You wouldn't want it to function the same way as a modern corporate lab. Those are already making as much progress as th

A standalone lab can be good to have. You wouldn't want it to function the same way as a modern corporate lab. Those are already making as much progress as they can by now. Something worthwhile to do in a smaller organization is things that bigger labs need but don't do. If you do it "right" a single-handed individual can make more promising creative progress than a whole team of corporate researchers can often end up with, but you need some pretty good breadth of innovation. If you look carefully at the historical illustration, you may notice a pipe organ is the central device in the picture. In the natural science lab I always liked to have different instruments that attract the attention of different types of visitors at different times. And some instruments that are only developed or used in the presence of no visitors at all.