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REPORT ON EUROPEAN AERONAUTICAL 

 LABORxATORIES 



By a. F. ZAHM, Ph.D. 

 (With Eleven Plates) 



GENERALITIES 



Places Z'isitcd. — During August and September, 1913, in company 

 with Jerome C. Hunsaker, Assistant Naval Constructor, U. S. N., 

 I visited the principal aeronautical laboratories near London, Paris, 

 and Gottingen, to study, in the interest of the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion, " the latest developments in instruments, methods, and resources 

 used and contemplated for the prosecution of scientific aeronautical 

 investigations." Incidentally we visited many of the best aero- 

 dromes (flying fields) and air craft factories in the neighborhood of 

 those cities, and took copious notes of our observations. We also 

 visited many aeronautical libraries, book-stores, and aero clubs, in 

 order to prepare a comprehensive list of the best and latest publi- 

 cations on aerial navigation and its immediately kindred subjects. 

 In each of the countries, England, Erance and Germany, we spent 

 about two weeks. We were made welcome at all the places visited, 

 and thus established personal relations which should be valuable in 

 future negotiations with the aeronautical constructors and investi- 

 gators in those countries. But these incidental visits and studies, 

 though they may prove serviceable, do not seem germane to the 

 present report. Neither does it seem advisable to take more than 

 passing notice of the aeronautical laboratories themselves in those 

 manifold details which have been already published in large and 

 comprehensive reports now accessible in the Smithsonian Library. 



Organisation, resources, and scope of laboratories. — The labora 

 tories examined by us are in particular ( i ) the aeronautic research 

 and test establishments of the British government near London ; (2) 

 the Institut Aerotechnique de St. Cyr, and the Laboratoire Aero- 

 dynamique Eififel, both near Paris; (3) the Gottingen Modelver- 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 62, No. 3 



