September 26, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



287 



chanieal warfare and of the location of 

 enemy guns, airplanes and mines. How 

 was it done? What was the method 

 adopted to stimulate development in such 

 an extraordinary way as it was stimulated 

 during the Great War? Let me answer 

 by relating a single chapter from our own 

 experience, which is not only representa- 

 tive of iall American experience in this 

 field, but is also similar in essential par- 

 ticulars to the experiences of the other 

 countries mentioned. 



On March 3, 1917, two days before the 

 United States had declared war, the Mili- 

 tary Committee of the National Research 

 Council, consisting of the heads of the 

 principal technical bureaus of the govern- 

 ment, both military and civil, and the 

 chairman and vice-ehainnan of the coun- 

 cil, met at the Smithsonian Institution in 

 Washington and dispatched at once a Sci- 

 entific Mission to Europe to ascertain by 

 first-hand contact and to report back to 

 the United States the exact status at that 

 time of scientific development work in Eu- 

 rope in aid of the war. This mission was 

 received with open arms by the Allies, for 

 it arrived at the darkest hour for France 

 in the history of the war, namely, the hour 

 following the disastrous attempts which 

 General Petain made to push back the 

 German lines in the spring of 1917. 



The French government, headed at that 

 time by M. Painleve, himself a scientist, not 

 only gave the seven scientists, Messrs. 

 Ames, Burgess, Hulett, Williams, Dakin, 

 Reid and Strong, who constituted this mis- 

 sion, opportunity to come into intimate 

 contact with all scientific developments 

 under way or projected at that time, but 

 he arranged to have a return mission, con- 

 sisting of some of the most eminent of 

 French, British and Italian scientists, such 

 as Majors Fabri and Abraham, le due de 

 Guiche, and Professor Grignard from 



France, Sir Ernest Rutherford and Com- 

 mander Bridge from England, Lieiitenant 

 Abetti from Italy, sent back to this coun- 

 try with definite official instructions to 

 hold back nothing, but to lay all the facts 

 and plans of the Allies relating to scien- 

 tific developments in aid of the war before 

 properly accredited scientific men in the 

 United States. 



The National Research Council, which 

 acted as the hosts of this mission in the 

 United States, with authority conferred 

 upon it by the War and Navy Departments, 

 called a conference in Washington of 

 some of the best scientific brains in the 

 United States and for a period of a full 

 week this conference met and discussed in 

 detail the progress thus far made and the 

 plans projected in the fields of submarine 

 detection, of location of guns, airplanes 

 and mines by sound, of ordinance, of sig- 

 nalling, of aviation instruments and acces- 

 sories, and of chemical warfare. 



As a result of these conferences there 

 were organized through the cooperative 

 effort of the National Research Council 

 and several of the bureaus of the Army 

 and Navj', a considerable number of 

 groups of scientific men, each of which 

 was charged with the development of some 

 particular field. For example. Professor 

 Trowbridge, of Princeton, and Professor 

 Lyman, of Harvard, were selected and 

 placed in charge of the development in 

 this country of the sound-ranging service. 

 They and the group of scientific men whom 

 they associated with them were first given 

 commissions in the Signal Corps, and with 

 Signal Corps authority and funds started 

 development work in sound-ranging at 

 Princeton University and at the Bureau of 

 Standards. This whole group was later 

 transferred to the authority of the Engi- 

 neer Corps, but its directing personnel 

 remained in the main unchanged and it 



