NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL 
411 
9 at the request of the Royal Society of London, for the benefit of the dele- 
gates present at this meeting. 
The meeting adjourned at 12 o'clock. 
Paul Brockett, Assistant Secretary. 
There is appended hereto a brief statement of the activities of some of the 
Divisions of the National Research Council. 
Division of Engineering. — The Section of Mechanical Engineering is carry- 
ing on its work in its Pittsburgh machine shop and has increased its personnel 
slightly. It is engaged on problems concerned with the development of a 
number of devices for the use of aircraft, of special balloons and parachutes, 
of mechanism for the control of trucks and tractors, and is undertaking a gen- 
eral investigation of fatigue of metals. 
■ The work of the Section on Prime Movers on the special engine has been 
suspended for lack of funds ; a special carburetor is being developed. 
In the work of the Section on Metallurgy on manganese saving, coopera- 
tion has been established in the investigations which they will make jointly 
with the Bureau of Standards and the Bureau of Mines; and already ten of 
the thirteen important smelters of manganese ore and eleven out of the sixteen 
open hearth steel works approached, have promised to cooperate. 
A committee is being formed to recommend the proper procedure in making 
and treating steel ingots for the better class of uses such as cannon, crank shafts, 
shells and armor. A second committee will take up the question of devising 
a pyrometer capable of measuring the temperature of the molten steel in 
open hearth and electric furnaces. Experimental work on the pressing of 
steel of various compositions into helmets has been begun. 
Division of Physics, Mathematics, Astronomy and Geophysics. — A consider- 
able fraction of the problems which are catalogued under the activities of the 
Physical Science Division of the National Research Council are associated 
with the work of the Science and Research Department of the Bureau of 
Aircraft Production. This work is at present carried on by about twenty 
officers and an equal number of civilian employees of scientific and technical 
qualifications, in addition to some hundred and twenty enlisted men. This 
does not include the 500 men who carry on in this country and abroad the 
work of the Meteorological Service of the Army, which is one of the sections 
of the Science and Research Department. 
The work in this country is carried on at Washington, Langley Field, Bal- 
timore, Pittsburgh, at a number of universities, and at several aviation fields. 
At Langley Field there is a laboratory which employs some thirty officers and 
men and keeps some ten airplanes continuously engaged on experimental 
work. At Washington there are some seventy enlisted men working at the 
Bureau of Standards under the direction of the officers of the Science and Re- 
search Department aided by the officers of the Bureau of Standards. At Bal- 
