1378 



attaches at our principal embassies to continue and extend the work 

 carried on for 17 months by the Research Information Service." 

 The report then quoted a recommendation by the "International 

 Research Council," of delegates from national academies of the 

 Allied Powers, at its first meeting in Paris (no date), as follows: 



The International Research Council, assembled in Paris and attended by 

 delegates of the national academies of sciences of Belgium, Brazil, the United 

 States, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, and 

 Serbia, has the honor to request the Governments of these countries to appoint 

 permanQnt scientific attaches to their principal embassies. The function of the 

 scientific attaches shall be to collect and forward information regarding scientific 

 and technical matters, and to insure the continuity of the relations established 

 during the war by the various scientific and technical missions. 



Other benefits of the scientific attache concept suggested in the 

 report were: representation of U.S. scientific and technical interests, 

 attending scientific meetings, keeping in touch with the progress of 

 research, providing a base for U.S. scientists abroad, responding to 

 substantial inquiries, and promoting international cooperation in 

 research. 



EARLY ORIGINS OF WORLD W^AR I SCIENTIFIC ATTACH^ PROGRAM 



Immediately after U.S. entry into the war, an ''American Com- 

 mittee dealing with Inventions" wrote the British Comptroller of 

 Munitions Inventions, offering support. A reply to this communication 

 was drafted by the Comptroller, May 15, 1917.^^ The following day 

 Dr. R. T. Glazebrook, to whom the Comptroller's letter was ad- 

 dressed, passed it on to Sir Ernest Rutherford, asking him to take it 

 with him to America. Apparently this exchange stimulated thought 

 on both sides of the Atlantic as to the value of closer cooperation in 

 technology to advance the war effort. 



The next item of correspondence was a letter from the British War 

 Mission in Washington to the Research Council of the Council of 

 National Defense, October 22, 1917, suggesting that "about 20 scien- 

 tific men from American universities" be sent to England to work in 

 defense research laboratories. After a good deal of milling around, the 

 various boards, committees, and military liaison groups — formal 

 and informal — appear to have given the British proposal their blessing 

 and the last item in the sequence is an announcement by the National 

 Research Council (NRC), March 15, 1918, formally establishing 

 the Research Information Committee, with a Washington head- 

 quarters office and branch offices in London and Paris (Rome was 

 added later). There would be a Scientific Attache in each of the foreign 

 offices, along with a military and naval attach^ or deputy. It was 

 clear that the functions of these foreign units were closely war-related 

 and operational. They were: 



M All we know of this gentleman is that his signature Is undecipherable. However, the list of Inventions he 

 asked the Americans to provide was impressive: 



(1) A pipe-pushing device which will ensure the maintenance of the required direction. 



(2) A substitute for lead antimony alloy for shrapnel bullets, the alloy consisting of 7 parts of lead and 

 1 of antimony and the number of bullets being 41 to the lb. 



(3) A means of dissipating gas clouds. 



(4) Predicting apparatus for A.A. gunnery. 



(5) Means for removing wire entanglements otherwise than by firing at them. 



(6) A short-base height-finder for anti-aircraft use. 



(7) Trench signalling apparatus for signalling back to the trenches from an advanced position. 



(8) Message carrying rockets. 



(9) Trench signalling apparatus for the transmission of messages which cannot be tapped. 



(10) Apparatus for detecting the approach of aircraft by sound. 



(11) Apparatus for the acoustic detection of hostile mining activities. 



(12) Armour-piercing bullet for use against tanks. 



