io THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE 



that we possess depicts him on the great tower of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, which he ascended night after night with 

 Joseph Henry, during the Civil War. From this vantage point 

 lights were flashed to distant stations, in connection with tests 

 of new methods of signaling. It was in such researches for 

 military purposes that the National Academy of Sciences had 

 its origin. 



The period of these experiments was an anxious one. Many 

 months of war, marked by serious and unexpected reverses, 

 had left small room for over-confidence, and taught the neces- 

 sity of utilizing every promising means of strengthening the 

 northern arms. With one or two notable exceptions, the great 

 scientific bureaus of the Government, now so powerful, had 

 not come into existence. But the country was not without its 

 leaders of science and engineering, both within and without the 

 Government circle. Davis, fighting Admiral, Chief of the 

 Bureau of Navigation, and founder of the Nautical Almanac ; 

 Bache, Superintendent of the Coast Survey, and designer of 

 the defenses of Philadelphia ; and Joseph Henry, of whom we 

 have already spoken, clearly recognized the need of a national 

 organization, embracing the whole range of science, to ad- 

 vise the Government on questions of science and art. Joining 

 with them Louis Agassiz, the great naturalist; Benjamin 

 Pierce, mathematician and astronomer; and B. A. Gould, 

 founder of the Observatory of the Argentine Republic, they 

 planned the National Academy of Sciences. A bill to incor- 

 porate the Academy was introduced in the Senate by Senator 

 Wilson of Massachusetts on February 21, 1863. This passed 

 the Senate and the House, and was signed by President Lincoln 

 on March 3. After enumerating the charter members, who 

 comprised the leading men of science and engineers of the day, 

 and empowering the Academy to make its own organization, 

 the bill provides that " the Academy shall, whenever called upon 

 by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, 

 experiment and report upon any subject of science or art, the 

 actual expense of such investigations, examinations, experi- 



