ADDRESS OF WELCOME 
L. Troost 
Central Organization for Applied Scientific Research in the Netherlands 
The joint sponsors of the Third Symposium on Naval Hydrodynamics, the U.S. Office of 
Naval Research and the Netherlands Ship Model Basin, have honored me by asking my 
assistance in the opening of this four-day Symposium in the Netherlands by delivering a 
brief welcome address on behalf of the host country. I am delighted to accept this invita- 
tion, in the first place because I am going to meet so many old and personal friends from 
the international scientific community concerned with the problems of naval hydrodynamics, 
in the second place because the Central Organization for Applied Scientific Research 
T.N.O. in the Netherlands which I represent, established by Law about 30 years ago, 
through its Special Organization for Industrial Research, has a very warm and active inter- 
est in applied and also more fundamental research in the field of naval architecture and 
marine engineering. This T.N.O. Organization brings together the interests of science, 
trade and industry with those of government under expert supervision, and channels research 
contributions of private industry and government appropriately to the areas where they are 
needed, encouraging, but not always attaining, a 50/50 ratio. We have the Netherlands 
Study Center for Naval Architecture and Navigation which is administrated by the T.N.O. 
Organization. This Symposium’s cosponsor, however, the Netherlands Ship Model Basin, 
being somewhat older than the Organization itself, is an independent Foundation, self- 
supporting for all practical purposes, but maintaining old and friendly relations with T.N.O. 
in a joint and successful effort to produce more fundamental research in greater quantity 
and of higher quality than would otherwise be possible. It should be stated here that the 
research-mindedness and support of the progressive shipping and shipbuilding industries, 
in a centuries-old tradition in this small Low Country-by-the-Sea, are as exemplary for all 
T.N.O.’s industrial relations, as is the efficiency in the use of industrial and governmental 
research funds by the Wageningen Institute. It is believed that the Dutch build more ship 
tonnage per head of the population than anyone else and they are rightly proud of their mari- 
time research facilities, including the new ones incorporated in the division of Naval 
Architecture of the Delft Institute of Technology. 
It may be about a year and a half ago that the group of naval and marine scientists of 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to which I then belonged, on the initiative of 
Professor Harvey Evans discussed the possibility of a seminar or symposium on recent 
developments in unusual ships like submersible and semisubmerged commercial vessels, 
hydrofoil, and hovering craft, under joint sponsorship of the Society of Naval Architects 
and Marine Engineers and M.I.T.’s corresponding Department. Through various circum- 
stances the Society was unable to support the proposal in its then form. You may imagine 
my personal satisfaction in seeing it realized after my departure from the U.S., here and 
now, although under different sponsorship, because I consider the subjects under discussion 
as entirely timely in a period characteristic of almost unbelievably rapid changes in tech- 
nology, in which the wild-looking idea of today may be the usual thing within 10 or 15 
xiii 
