58 The Smithsonian Institution 



a strongly individualized establishment like the Smithsonian 

 Institution. The names of Henry and Baird are so thor- 

 oughly identified with the history of the Institution during 

 its first four decades that their biographies would together 

 form an almost complete history of its operations. A thirty- 

 two years' term of service was rendered by one, thirty-seven 

 by the other. Perhaps no other organization has had the 

 benefit of so uninterrupted an administration of forty years, 

 beginning with its birth and continuing in an unbroken line 

 of consistent policy a career of growing usefulness and 

 enterprise. 



The first meeting of the Board of Regents took place Sep- 

 tember 6, 1846, and before the end of the year the policy of 

 the Regents was practically determined upon, for, after decid- 

 ing upon the plan of the building now occupied, they elected 

 to the secretaryship Professor Joseph Henry, and thus ap- 

 proved his plan for the organization of the Institution which 

 had previously been submitted to them. 



Henry was succeeded in the office of Secretary by Profes- 

 sor Spencer Fullerton Baird, then the leading authority on 

 the mammals, birds, fishes, and reptiles of America, the foun- 

 der of the United States Fish Commission, and of "public 

 fish culture," elected in 1878; and he in turn by Samuel 

 Pierpont Langley, preeminent as physicist and astronomer, 

 the inventor of the bolometer, the discoverer of the greater 

 portion of the infra-red spectrum, and the highest authority 

 upon the physics of the atmosphere, elected in 1888. 



