20 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1949 
Loeblich; 2,500 Middle Ordovician fossils collected by Dr. Cooper in 
Tennessee and Virginia; and 2,000 Permian and Jurassic ammonites 
and brachiopods from Sicily. As usual the year’s accessions included 
a number of transfers from the United States Geological Survey. 
A nearly complete skeleton of the Triassic phytosaur Machaero- 
prosopus gregori, from the Chinle formation near St. Johns, Ariz., 
excavated and transferred to the Museum by the United States Geo- 
logical Survey, constitutes the outstanding acquisition of the year in 
vertebrate paleontology. Through the Walcott funds there were 
received articulated skeletal remains of the condylarth Meniscotherium 
robustum and the complete skeleton of a large ichthyodectid fish. 
Outstanding gifts include specimens of the Devonian arthrodiran fish 
Hudinichthys terrilli, a partial skeleton of the Pleistocene jaguar Pan- 
thera augusta, an incomplete skull of the Pleistocene walrus Odobenus 
virginanus, and a portion of the skull of a Miocene tapir. The 
Smithsonian River Basin Surveys transferred mammalian fossils from 
Kocene and Oligocene deposits of Wyoming and Montana. 
Engineering and industries—The presentation of the historic 
aeroplane invented and built by Wilbur and Orville Wright and flown 
by them at Kitty Hawk, N. C., on December 17, 1903, was witnessed 
by 1,000 or more distinguished guests at the formal ceremony held 
in the north entrance hall of the Arts and Industries Building of the 
United States National Museum on December 17, 1948. The presen- 
tation was made by Milton Wright, of Dayton, Ohio, on behalf of the 
estate of Orville Wright. The Chancellor of the Smithsonian Insti- 
tution, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, accepted the Wright Brothers’ 
aeroplane on behalf of the Nation, and the formal acceptance address 
was delivered by Vice President-Elect Alben W. Barkley. 
A collection of electrical measuring instruments, early lamps, and 
electronic tubes, some of which were constructed in the 1880 decade, 
was presented by the Weston Electrical Instrument Corp. The 
Museum is indebted to the United States Signal Corps Laboratories 
for an exhibit illustrating radar and microwave radio-relay communi- 
cation. From the Cork Institute of America the section of wood 
technology received 100 samples and 9 photographs which illustrate 
the production and utilization of cork bark. Etchings and serigraphs 
by Forain, Margo, Velonis, Detwiller, and Kainen were added to the 
graphic arts collection through the Dahlgreen fund. A Marcy 
Sciopticon Magic Lantern, a kerosene-lamp projector, patented 
1868-69, was the most interesting accession in the photographic 
section. The division of medicine and public health received from 
Telex, Inc., a number of devices that show the development of electric 
hearing aids. 
