COMMITTEES ON BEHALF OF THE GOVERNMENT 227 



Whether any results were reached by this commission is doubt- 

 ful. A preliminary report was made to the Academy on January 

 5, 1865, and another report of progress on January 26, 1866, 

 but in 1880 we learn that " owing to the lack of appropriations 

 these investigations have not yet been concluded." 28 In the 

 meantime two members of the commission had died, and perhaps 

 others. In view of this circumstance and the fact that fifteen years 

 after the experiments were begun they were still unfinished, it is 

 improbable that they were ever brought to a conclusion. The 

 most that can be learned is that the object in view was to deter- 

 mine the measure of expansion that would give the best results 

 in practice, that a program for the experiments was considered 

 at a meeting held in New York on June 29, 1864, at the Novelty 

 Iron Works, of which Horatio Allen was the president, that the 

 apparatus proposed by him was approved by the commission, 

 that after delay this apparatus was made ready for use, and that 

 experiments were conducted by five assistant engineers detailed 

 by the Navy Department, one of whom had general charge, 

 while the other four kept regular watch of operations. 29 



A COMMITTEE ON MATERIALS FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF 



CENT COINS. 1864 



This committee, which was misnamed in the reports of the 

 Academy, was appointed on April 11, 1864, at the request of the 

 Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, " to examine and 

 report upon aluminum bronze, and other materials for the manu- 

 facture of cent coins." 30 It consisted of John Torrey (chairman) , 

 Joseph Henry, Wolcott Gibbs, F. A. P. Barnard and the Presi- 

 dent, A. D. Bache, who was added by request of the Treasury 

 Department. The phrase from the first Annual of the Academy, 

 quoted above, defining the duties of the committee, though 

 occurring in substantially the same form in the report of the 



28 Rep. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1864, pp. 2 and 5-7; also for 1866, p. 3, and for 1879, p. 9. 



29 See Rep. Seer. Navy, 1864, pp. xxix, xxx, and 1095, 1096, House Exec. Doc. no. i, 

 38th Congress, zd Session; also Isherwood's "Experimental Researches in Steam Engineer- 

 ing," vol. 2, 1865, p. xxxi. 



10 Ann. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1863-64, p. 40. 



