REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 15 



continual use in rubber manufacture in England for more than 75 

 years. To the section of textiles there came many outstanding ex- 

 amples of new fabrics and fabric application and an exhibit showing 

 the manufacture and uses of nylon. In wood technology 964 exotic 

 woods were received as an exchange from the Forest Products Research 

 Laboratory of Great Britain, most of them heretofore unrepresented 

 in the section's collections. In addition, 182 wood specimens were 

 received from the New York State College of Forestry and 561 photo- 

 micrographic prints of sections of Japanese woods from the War 

 Department. 



In the division of graphic arts the most notable accession of the year 

 was a microengraving machine capable of engraving the Lord's Prayer 

 781,250 times within a square-inch area. This miraculous contrivance 

 was constructed by the Rev. J. C. Crawford after the original machine 

 invented by W. Peters in London in 1852. Outstanding pieces of 

 motion-picture equipment received included a 60-mm. camera invented 

 in 1893 by George Demeny of France and manufactured by the Gau- 

 mont Co. around 1896; a 16-mm. Bell & Howell gun-type camera 

 adopted and used by the Navy to photograph the earth from a German 

 V-2 rocket fired at the Army Ordnance Proving Grounds, White 

 Sands, N. Mex., October 10, 1946 ; and a 1911 Pathe Freres 35-mm. 

 hand-operated projector. Sixty glass negatives taken in the late nine- 

 teenth century by the photographer Robert Stead and 143 lantern 

 slides taken by the photographer Titus B. Snoddy, Sr., came as gifts 

 to the Museum. Five more etched copper plates were added to the 

 Charles W. Dahlgreen group for printing under the Dahlgreen fund. 



Several interesting and desirable additions were received for the 

 division of medicine and public health, the most valuable one of the 

 year being a series of specially prepared transparencies illustrating the 

 subject of hospitalization. These were made and contributed by the 

 American Hospital Association as a memorial to the late Dr. S. S. 

 Gold water ( 1 873-1942 ) . Historically important is a "Grosse Flamme" 

 X-ray machine with tube and tube stand, one of the earliest American- 

 made machines of its kind. 



A number of desiderata found their way to the aeronautical collec- 

 tions, the most outstanding in point of historic importance being the 

 collection of parts remaining of original gliders devised by John J. 

 Montgomery between 1905 and 1911. From the standpoint of rela- 

 tionship to air warfare and particularly the devastating effect of 

 bombing as practiced in World War II, the Norden bombsight used 

 in directing the first atomic bomb dropped over Japan constitutes an 

 important accession. A series of 82 interesting scale-model World 

 War II airplanes were transferred from the Navy Department. Three 

 other aircraft models received were of an XFL-1 Bell "Airabonita" 



