Chapter XII: The National Research Council 349 (14)

Before returning to the United States I visited my sisters in Banat. One of them was living in Idvor. On a Sunday in August during that visit I was dining in her garden. There was a high fence around it, and not far from it the boys and the girls of Idvor were dancing kolo on the village green and the older people were looking on. Presently somebody knocked on the garden-gate and my brother-in-law opened it. There stood a rider, holding with one hand his horse, which was covered with foam; in the other hand he held a telegram which he had brought in haste from the telegraph station in another village, about five miles away from Idvor. My native village had neither a telegraph nor a telephone line, although I, its son, aspired to connect telephonically every person in the United States to every other. The telegram in the rider’s hand was for me, sent by my attorney, telling me that, on the day before, my final papers had been delivered to the Marconi Company and that the check for the final payments was in his hands. “Good news,” I said to myself, and gave the rider a tip of ten florins to reward him for his haste, evidenced by the white foam on his horse. The bagpiper and the kolo-dancers stopped when they saw a ten-florin note in the rider’s hand and heard him brag that he had delivered to me a telegram from America. The wondering crowd assembled at the garden-gate, and the older peasants who had gone to school with me in my boyhood days asked me if the telegram really had come from America. When I said yes, and that it had been sent on that very morning they looked at each other and winked, as if signalling to each other to be on guard lest I fool them with an American yarn. Then the oldest one among them addressed me as follows: “Did you not tell us that between here and America there are four empires, each bigger than Austria, and then the great ocean, which one cannot cross in less than a week even in the fastest of ships?” “I certainly did say that, and I repeat it now,” said I. He added: “How can a telegram cross all that distance in less than a day?” “It could do it in less than a minute if man’s clumsiness did not delay it. It could travel from here to Vienna in less than a second,” said I, and carefully watched his expression. The old man seemed undecided; he did not know whether to take offense at my attempt to work off a silly yarn on him, or to proceed with his cross-examination, and finally decided in favor of the latter course. “Who invented all that?” asked he impatiently. “An American did it,” said I boastfully. “These Americans must be very clever people,” said he and waited eagerly for my reply. “Yes, indeed, they are very clever people,” said I. “Much more clever than anybody in this village?” was his next question, and when I assured him that the Americans were much more clever than anybody in Idvor, he fired at me the following shot: “Then how in the name of St. Michael do you manage to make a living there?”

This incident in my native Idvor did me a lot of good. The experts in Berlin and the high officers in Vienna had been most polite and complimentary, and all their well-meant adulation coming on the top of the newspaper legends about my inventions might have turned my head and made me imagine that I was a “wizard.” Many an inventor and scientist has been ruined by being persuaded that he is a “wizard.” I have always believed that when a successful inventor is exposed to dangers of that kind he should, somewhat like that king of antiquity, hire somebody to whisper as often as possible into his ear: “You are an ordinary mortal.” Whenever I see now the Elliot Cresson Gold Medal of the Franklin Institute, the gold medal of the National Institute of Social Sciences, the Edison Medal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the Hebert prize of the French Academy, and several other evidences of recognition in my possession, I always think of that professor who blamed his hard luck for his failure to infer from the loaded strings which hung daily over his head what I had inferred from La Grange’s imaginary string. It was, I know, a lucky day when on the 14th of July, 1884, I found that second-hand bookshop in the Quartier Latin in Paris and picked up there a copy of La Grange’s treatise. Without it, I might have remained as ignorant of the remarkable properties of a loaded string as that professor was. My answer to the peasant’s question, “How in the name of St. Michael do you manage to make a living there?” is this: “The humble herdsman of Idvor and the famous La Grange of Paris told me how to do it.”

XII

THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL

The mathematical problems in the theory of electrical transmission, and the research of the behavior of materials employed in the construction of inductance-coils kept me busy, and made me forget that I was missing the splendid opportunities offered by New Physics, which I always represented symbolically by the picture of a vacuum-tube, because its origin dates from Roentgen’s discovery. My complete recovery from the shock of 1896 did not reconcile me to the vacuum-tube, until several years had wiped out the memory which my mind had associated with it. By that time I had dropped too far behind the men who were leading in the procession of the revelations which New Physics had disclosed to man.

No sooner had Perrin, a French physicist, demonstrated that the cathode rays were negative electricity moving from the negative electrode of a vacuum-tube to the positive electrode than Professor John Joseph Thomson, of the University of Cambridge, proved that this negative electricity is concentrated in small corpuscles, called electrons to-day, which move with great velocities, and that the ratio of the electrical charge to the mass of each electron is experimentally determinable, and is, under ordinary conditions, a definite and invariable quantity. This learned man, when a youth of only twenty-five, had predicted in 1881, fourteen years before Roentgen’s discovery, that the cathode rays were small negatively charged bodies, moving with great velocities. Assuming them to be spherical, he calculated, by the Faraday-Maxwell electromagnetic theory, the ratio of their charge to their mass. He showed theoretically that their mass consisted of two parts, one of which is the ordinary gravitational or material mass, and the other a new mass which is proportional to the electrical energy in the electron, and that this mass also depended upon the velocity of the motion in a definite way. He devised and employed an experimental method to determine this ratio. The most remarkable feature of this interrelation between the electromagnetic mass and the velocity of motion was the fact that when the velocity approached the velocity of light the mass approached an infinitely large value. But no such extremes of velocity of motion of the electrons in a vacuum-tube were found at that time.

Becquerel, the French physicist, discovered, soon after Roentgen’s discovery, that certain substances associated with the element uranium emitted electrons, both negative and positive, without being in a vacuum-tube and submitted to the action of a great electrical force. Madame Curie isolated the most active of these substances and called it _radium_. The action of electron emission discovered by Becquerel was called radioactivity. Three distinct things, it was found, were emitted by radium: negative electrons, the so-called beta rays, some of which were moving with enormous velocities; positive electrons, the so-called alpha rays, moving with smaller velocities; and, finally, an emission which had the same physical properties as the X-rays. The beta rays, some of which move with a velocity nearly equal to the velocity of light, enabled the physicists to determine experimentally, employing J. J. Thomson’s method, the relation between the mass of the electron and its velocity, and lo and behold, it was found that, in all probability, the negative electron contained no other mass except the mass due to its electromagnetic energy. In other words, a negative electron is concentrated electricity and nothing else. Similar experiments with positive electrons led to similar conclusions. Another most remarkable result was the revelation of the great difference between the masses, and, therefore, between the electrical energies residing in the negative and in the positive electron. The mass of a positive electron was found to be very nearly equal to the mass of a hydrogen atom, and the mass of a negative electron was found to be only about one two-thousandth part of the mass of the positive electron, and this meant that if the electrons are of spherical shape then the diameter of the positive electron is only one two-thousandth part of the diameter of the negative electron, since the energies and therefore the masses are inversely proportional to the diameters. In other words, there is in the positive electron a much bigger concentration of electricity than in the negative and, therefore, much more work was used up to produce that concentration. Experimental data and calculation gave for the diameter of a negative electron one ten-thousandth part of the diameter of the smallest atom, that is, of the hydrogen atom, and therefore the diameter of the positive electron should be only one twenty-millionth part of the diameter of a hydrogen atom. A most bewildering revelation!

The remarkable results of these historic experiments forced, one may say, upon the physicist the electromagnetic theory of matter, the theory, namely, that the ultimate components in the structure of matter are positive and negative electrons. This theory was vaguely foreshadowed by Faraday in his poetic visions suggested by his researches on electrolysis. Needless to say, the physicists in the United States were thrilled by these revelations, and by the new views disclosed by them, perhaps even more than by the discoveries of the X-rays and of radioactivity. The first visible effect of this thrill was the organization in 1899 of the American Physical Society, a quarter of a century after Tyndall’s visit to this country. Just think of it, the great United States had no physical society prior to that time!

It is an interesting fact that two of the most important American organizations in abstract science were started at Columbia College. The first was the American Mathematical Society. In 1888, two young instructors at Columbia College, Fiske and Jacoby, started a mathematical club. To-day the first is a professor of mathematics, and the second is a professor of astronomy at Columbia University. I joined them in 1889, as soon as I had returned to Columbia. We transformed the mathematical club into the New York Mathematical Society, and elected for president the famous Columbia don, the late Howard Van Amringe, for many years senior professor of mathematics at Columbia College. Doctor Fiske was its secretary; no young and struggling scientific organization ever had a better secretary. The society prospered, and in 1894 it was transformed into the American Mathematical Society, counting among its members most of the distinguished mathematicians of the land. I am certainly very proud that I am one of its charter members.

In 1899 several Columbia physicists, including myself, and their friends from Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Clark, and other places, met at Columbia and organized the American Physical Society. The late Professor Rowland, of Johns Hopkins, was elected its president, and one of its most distinguished members was Professor Ernest Rutherford, of McGill University, Montreal. He is now Sir Ernest Rutherford, the Cavendish professor of physics at the University of Cambridge, occupying the professorial chair once occupied by Maxwell, then by Rayleigh, and then by Thomson, now Sir John Joseph Thomson, master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Their names I have mentioned often in the course of this narrative. It was most unfortunate for the progress of American physics that because of his failing health Rowland’s wonderful influence in the society was of short duration. He died in April, 1901, while still a young man. Rutherford’s wonderful discoveries in radioactivity were reported regularly by himself at the meetings of the society, and I often thought that these reports alone, even without the many other good things which came along, amply justified the existence of the society. When I compare the American Physical Society of twenty years ago with the American Physical Society of to-day I can scarcely believe that so much progress has been possible in so short a time. I recognize, however, that this remarkable growth is clue not only to the energy of youth of this country but also to the energy of youth of New Physics, which I call Electron Physics.

In October, 1899, Rowland delivered his presidential address before the society at whose head he stood. I can see now how happy he looked on that memorable occasion. Inspired by the latest revelations in Electron Physics, he prophesied what new revelations the physicists should expect in the approaching future. After describing physics as “a science above all sciences, which deals with the foundation of the universe, with the constitution of matter from which everything in the universe is made, and with the ether of space by which alone the various portions of matter forming the universe affect each other ...” he stated frankly that the physicists of America “form an aristocracy, not of wealth, not of pedigree, but of intellect and ideals.... Let us cultivate the idea of the dignity of our pursuit so that this feeling may sustain us in the midst of a world which gives its highest praise, not to the investigator in the pure ethereal physics which our society is formed to cultivate, but to the one who uses it for satisfying the physical rather than the intellectual needs of mankind.” He then pleaded that we “recognize the eras when great thoughts have been introduced into our subject and honor the great men who introduced them and proved them correct.” Then, enumerating the great problems of the physical universe, he asked: “What is matter; what is gravitation; what is ether and radiation; what is electricity and magnetism; how are these connected together, and what is their relation to heat?” Now, these are the very questions which Electron Physics has been trying to answer since that time; and this is the idealism which the American physicist has had before him ever since the days of Rowland.

Electromagnetic theory of matter was the first answer to Rowland’s question: What is matter? But how about the answer to his second question: What is gravitation? If matter contains nothing but electrons, if they are really the most fundamental building stones of matter, then electricity as concentrated and stored up in the electrons can exert in addition to the well-known electrical force also a gravitational force. A somewhat novel idea, but ... why not, and why so? Einstein gives the best answer to this.

To Rowland’s question: What is Ether? Electron Physics gave a puzzling answer, but the puzzle has led us into a side path of surpassing beauty. Our famous physicists, Michelson and Morley, are a combination of two names better known in the world of physical science to-day than Castor and Pollux were known when Zeus, descending from the heights of Mount Olympus, sought the companionship of mortal men. The fame of the twins, Michelson and Morley, not, however, of Michelson alone, rests upon an experimental demonstration, the importance of which was not until recently fully appreciated, the demonstration, namely, that there is no ether drift; that is to say, so far as man can tell, there is no relative motion between the earth moving through space and the ether which is supposed to fill all interstellar space. On the other hand, the hypothesis that the ether moves with the moving earth leads to insurmountable difficulties. This was, indeed, a most embarrassing situation! Since Michelson originally, and, later, Michelson and Morley, employed the radiation of light in their attempts to detect the ether drift, it became necessary to re-examine the electromagnetic theory of propagation of light for the case that light, as in the Michelson and Morley experiment, proceeds from a source which together with the observer is moving through space. The famous Professor Lorentz, of Leyden, Holland, whom I have the honor of knowing personally, made the first successful extension of this theory, and explained satisfactorily Michelson and Morley’s result. But the extension was obtained by what was acknowledged to be a clever notion, and not by an unavoidable physical fact. The same extension of the theory was obtained by Einstein, but it was founded upon a broad physical principle which Lorentz’s extension lacked. Lorentz preferred Einstein’s deduction of his extension, called the Lorentz transformation. The physical principle just referred to is now popularly known as the Special Relativity Theory, which Einstein extended later into the General Relativity Theory. Einstein’s theory explains very simply the Michelson-Morley experiment, but how does it answer Rowland’s question: What is Ether? Also very simply by saying that ether is superfluous in our analysis of physical phenomena. Faraday expressed a similar view nearly eighty years ago. That, however, which is essential in this narrative in connection with Einstein’s relativity theory is the great fact that by it a general demonstration is furnished that all forms of electrical energy are a mass which has _inertial as well as gravitational_ activity. In the electromagnetic theory of matter this demonstration plays a most important part. One of the schemes of this theory is so simple and so beautiful, and appeals so strongly even to an imagination not scientifically trained, that I must tell here very briefly some of its most striking features.

All atoms are built up from a single atom, the atom of hydrogen, which consists of a positive electron or proton, the nucleus, and a single negative electron revolving around it like a satellite around the central planet. A heavier atom, say an atom of oxygen, consists of sixteen atoms of hydrogen, the positive nuclei of which form the positive nucleus or central portion of the oxygen atom. Some of the negative electrons are distributed among the positive electrons of the central nucleus, serving to cement them together, and the other negative electrons are revolving like satellites around the central nucleus. The number of these satellites is the atomic number of the atom, and it is this number, and not the atomic weight, which determines the chemical characteristics of the atoms. This is only a mere glance into the structure of Electron Physics, made here for the purpose of pointing out some of the never-dreamt-of possibilities that Electron Physics holds in view. For instance, four atoms of hydrogen combining into an atom of helium give off a certain amount of energy. We say the atoms of hydrogen degrade into the heavier atom of helium and, thereby, a certain amount of energy is liberated. A helium atom weighs less than four atoms of hydrogen, because of the diminished energy per atom of hydrogen, the decrement of the weight being proportional to the decrement of energy. This is demanded by Einstein’s theory, which is really an extension of the theory first proposed by Sir John Joseph Thomson, and it is a remarkable fact that these weight relations satisfy the prophecy of the theory. The amount of energy obtained by the degradation of the lighter into heavier atoms is enormous. But we do not know how to produce the process of this degradation. The question arises: Do not the young stars, the very hot stars, which always consist of gases of small atomic weight, obtain a supply of radiant energy from the degradation of atoms of small into atoms of high atomic weight, and, if this is so, then why shall we not some day learn this great secret from the stars? The language of the stars has many deep secrets to tell; it mystifies me just as much to-day as it did on the pasturelands of my native village fifty years ago.

Many other most startling contemplations may be connected with the new views opened up by Electron Physics, all of them illustrating the beauty, the wealth, and the power of a new science which represents the marriage of two great sciences, physics and chemistry.

Industrial science is very much impressed by new discoveries which, as Rowland expressed it, “deal with the foundation of the universe,” but which in spite of their revolutionary character are easily understood by the practical man. Electron Physics abounds in discoveries of that kind, and it seems that they have rushed upon us like a cloud-burst. Things have been done that formerly seemed impossible. Take, for an illustration, a thing which is so familiar to all, the complete transformation of wireless telegraphy into the new art which is called Radio. A vacuum-tube with a hot filament fills up with negative electrons, which are thrown off by the hot filament. The filament may be said to be radioactive. A current can be established by applying an electromotive force which drives these negative electrons from the space surrounding the hot filament to a positive electrode. Here we have a new type of Crookes’s tube, operated by a small electrical tension, and not by that of a powerful induction-coil, which is necessary when the negative electrode is cold. This current is called the thermionic current, and its value can be varied in any way we please by a second electrical force which acts through a third electrode, called the grid, placed in the path of the thermionic current. This is the so-called audion tube, invented by a Yale graduate, Doctor Lee De Forest. In the hands of the Western Electric Company and of the General Electric Company, this tube has transformed the whole radio art by its amplifying power. My old inventions of electrical tuning and rectification have been raised to unexpected powers by the action of these tubes, and the inventions of my former pupil and research associate, Major E. H. Armstrong, and of others, have given us the broadcasting art, which surpasses the wildest expectations of even the rosiest of optimists of a few years ago. Wherever Electron Physics has entered there have sprung up new crops of the rarest fruit, and it is no wonder that there are to-day so many workers in the newly discovered fertile fields of the electromagnetic theory. Attend any meeting of the American Physical Society and you will be convinced that the research in the university laboratories as well as in the research laboratories of our industries would satisfy even the highest expectations of the men who fifty years ago, under the leadership of Joseph Henry, started the movement in favor of higher scientific research. The university and the industrial laboratories are mindful of Rowland’s admonition: “In choosing subjects for our investigation, let us, if possible, work upon those subjects which will finally give us advanced knowledge of some great subject.” What subject can be greater than eternal truth, and that aim, according to my definition, is idealism in science.

It is very true that our American scientific research activities in physics and chemistry are so alive to-day because they have been greatly stimulated by the wonderful advances, through electron physics, in the electromagnetic theory, and in its very successful applications to technical and industrial problems. But it is also true that the scientific research activities in other branches, like biology, which are not closely connected with the electromagnetic theory and its applications, have also blossomed up with wonderful rapidity during the last twenty-five years. It will be conceded, I think, that all these activities in abstract science are to a very substantial extent due to the rapid rise of the American university and to its splendid influence upon the mentality of our industries. But in this democratic country, covering a vast area, each State has the privilege of regulating in its own way its own educational programme and policy, and each privately endowed university can pursue its own ideals in its own way without worrying very much about any other university. Lack of unity and uniformity was, therefore, always felt, and there was always a strong although often an unconscious desire in the hearts of scientific men to bring about a uniformity in the aims and aspirations of higher scientific research in our universities. The American Association for the Advancement of Science made quite a number of efforts in this direction, but the progress was slow. The great World War forced us to make another big effort in this direction, and this time the effort succeeded beyond all expectations. The following story of this big effort is, I am sure, of national importance, and should be known by every intelligent person in the United States.

Just as the cultivation of science in the United States was first taken up in the technical schools, like the School of Mines of Columbia College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and many others, and not in colleges or universities, so the organization of scientific associations took place first among the engineers, the graduates of the technical schools. The American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, for instance, were organized some time before most of the present associations in abstract science, that is in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology were organized. Even the youngest among the leading engineering societies, that is, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, was organized in the early eighties, whereas the American Physical Society was organized nearly twenty years later, in 1899.

The organization of these technical societies did not wait for the arrival of the American university. But, nevertheless, when the American university arrived, and with it the research laboratories in the fundamental sciences, it improved the quality of the American engineer, and of the American engineering societies, just as it improved the scientific standards of the American industrial organizations. The National Academy of Sciences deserves here a special consideration. It is an association of workers in _abstract science_, principally, but, contrary to what I have just said, it is, like the American Philosophical Society, founded by Franklin, older than any of our national engineering societies. Its early birth was due to the conditions created by the Civil War. Joseph Henry, I imagine, suggested to President Lincoln that a mobilization of the scientific resources of the North would improve greatly its military strength, and thus the National Academy of Sciences was chartered by Congress during the Civil War, in 1863, and was approved by President Lincoln. It was a creation of the Civil War, and is in many respects an institution which forms a part of the Federal Government. I shall describe now how the National Academy of Sciences, itself a creation of the Federal Government during the Civil War, gave birth during the World War to another national scientific institution which is the climax of the great scientific movement started fifty years ago. I have watched this movement almost from its very beginning up to the present time; yes, I have been a part of it during its most active period, and I believe that I understand its full meaning.

The four leading engineering societies, mentioned above, were in quite a flourishing condition at the beginning of this century; flourishing not only with regard to the number, but also with regard to the quality of their membership, and their progress was speeding on with remarkable rapidity. For instance, the papers read before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1900, and the discussions which followed them, were immeasurably superior to those read in 1890, when I first became a member of this Institute, because the quality of its membership was also immeasurably superior. The great American industries paid much more respectful attention to these engineering societies than when I first came to Columbia College in 1889. The greatest among the American captains of industry of those days, the late Andrew Carnegie, held them in so high an esteem that he presented a magnificent gift to them which led to the formation of the United Engineering Society. This happened in 1904, and marks one of the great events in the history of American technical science.

It is of considerable historical interest to observe here that Carnegie’s magnificent gift to these national engineering societies is closely connected with a very modest move made by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, nearly thirty years ago. The late Doctor Schuyler Skaats Wheeler, at one time president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, had purchased the famous electrical library of the late Latimer Clark, of London, and had presented it to the Institute. But the Institute had no building of its own, and, therefore, no place for housing permanently this unique library. Several of the members of the Institute, including myself, were looking around anxiously for some practical scheme which would provide the Institute with a home of its own, where the Latimer Clark library could be permanently located. It was obvious that Andrew Carnegie, who was always interested in libraries, should be selected as our first point of application. We never had to appeal to anybody else; Mr. Carnegie was most generous. The engineering societies appealed to his lively imagination. It was the engineer who assisted him in the development of the great steel industry, and it was the engineer upon whom he relied to maintain the American steel industry in the leading position which it had won, in a great measure, by Carnegie’s initiative and efforts. He had already paid a splendid tribute to science for the service it had rendered to him when he created and richly endowed the Carnegie Institution of Washington, which was to provide and does provide ample facilities to American genius in its efforts to solve some of the great problems in science. I mention here as an illustration the endowment of the Mount Wilson Astrophysical Observatory at Pasadena, California, an act which has borne magnificent fruit under Professor George Ellery Hale’s direction. Instead of giving to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers a building for a library, Mr. Carnegie presented to the four national engineering societies a building for their permanent home, with suitable accommodations for a great library, for administrative offices, for conference and meeting rooms, for lecture-rooms, and for a great assembly hall. One of the objects of the United Engineering Society was, according to its charter, to hold and administer this princely gift “for the purpose of advancing the engineering arts and sciences in all their branches and for maintaining a free public engineering library.” The famous Latimer Clark electrical library is now a part of this great engineering library. The four national societies represented by the United Engineering Society have a carefully picked membership of over fifty thousand, and the magnificence of their home on Thirty-ninth Street, near Fifth Avenue, New York, is fully justified by their great prestige. I never look upon this beautiful structure without being thrilled by the thought that the treasures it contains in the form of organized scientific achievement and brains are among the greatest of the many rich assets of this nation.

Sixteen years ago, Mr. Carnegie and myself represented the American Philosophical Society at the memorial service for the late Lord Kelvin, the famous scientist. It was held in the great hall of the Engineering Building. As we sat on the platform, waiting for the commencement of the ceremony, I scanned the beautiful proportions of the great hall, and they appeared to me more beautiful than ever. “You must feel very happy when you look at this splendid gift which you made to the Engineering Society,” said I to Mr. Carnegie, who sat on my right. “I do, yes indeed I do, and I hope that some day you may experience the same feeling of happiness which comes from giving,” responded the great ironmaster. “Perhaps I will,” said I, “but remember that I am a Serb, and not a Scot: it takes a Scot to understand and to practise the art of giving.” “But it also takes a Scot to understand and to practise the art of taking,” said Mr. Carnegie, and his vigorous eyes sparkled with the light of good-natured humor.

Another event occurred in the history of the four founder societies which will always mark the beginning of a new epoch in American science. Another captain of American industry extended a generous hand to the United Engineering Society, offering to aid it in its work of “advancing the engineering arts and sciences in all their branches.” It is very significant that this second generous captain of industry was in many respects a striking contrast to the first, the late Andrew Carnegie. I am speaking now of Ambrose Swasey of Cleveland, Ohio. He, like Carnegie, started his industrial career with very small training in technical sciences. What he knew about engineering and manufacturing he had obtained by practical experience. Ambrose Swasey is a splendid illustration of a disciplined intellect trained by the training of his hand. I have always believed that the most striking difference between the American and the European is due to the fact that the American in his early youth receives a much better manual training than the European does, and that this accounts for the American directness of thought, judgment, and action. I never saw a better illustration of this theory than Mr. Ambrose Swasey. He began his career as a machinist, and when a little over thirty years of age he and a friend of his, Mr. Warner, another young machinist, started a manufacturing plant of their own, making fine machine-tools and astronomical instruments of precision. The shops of Warner and Swasey became famous all over the world for their wonderful workmanship.

The American manufacturer has achieved great things in mass production. This was Mr. Carnegie’s strong point; but Mr. Swasey did not belong to that type of American manufacturer. His aim was few products but each one of them as perfect as careful manipulation, personal attention guided by superior intelligence, and inventive ingenuity, could make it. Most of the telescope mountings of the great astronomical observatories in this country were made in Mr. Swasey’s Cleveland shops. His shop experience made him an engineer of a very high order, so high indeed, that the American Society of Mechanical Engineers elected him president, and, later, honorary member. The charter of the United Engineering Society speaks of “advancing the engineering arts and sciences in all their branches,” but there was no other visible instrumentality for doing that work than the free engineering library. Ambrose Swasey proposed to correct this deficiency when, in 1914, he offered to the United Engineering Society a gift of two hundred thousand dollars as a nucleus for an endowment the income of which was to be used for “the furtherance of research in science and engineering, or for the advancement in any other manner of the profession of engineering and the good of mankind.” These words, dictated by an American captain of industry, bear witness to the fact that there is much idealism in American industry. The United Engineering Society accepted Mr. Swasey’s gift, and established the Engineering Foundation, which was managed by its own board, the Foundation Board, nominated by the four founder societies. Its members acted as trustees of Mr. Swasey’s gift and of any other gift that might be given to the Engineering Foundation to serve a purpose similar to that of Mr. Swasey’s gift. This Foundation became an instrumentality of the United Engineering Society for the stimulation, direction, and support of scientific research. It became, furthermore, the liaison agency between the engineers on the one hand and the technologists and scientists on the other hand, in activities concerned with research in all branches of mathematical, physical, and biological sciences. In other words, one of the great captains of American industry, Andrew Carnegie, was instrumental in bringing the great national engineering societies together into the United Engineering Society, and another great captain of American industry, Ambrose Swasey, invented and by his generosity constructed an instrumentality, the Engineering Foundation, which he put into the hands of the United Engineering Society for the purpose of enabling it to do the work which its charter demands, “advancing the engineering arts and sciences in all their branches.” I never think of these two generous acts on the part of Mr. Carnegie and of Mr. Swasey, without being reminded that these two great organizers of American industry were guided by the same motives of idealism which had guided the great men of the revolutionary times when they organized the United States. Read the charters of the Carnegie Institution, of the Engineering Society, and of the Engineering Foundation, and you will find that no trace of materialism can be found in the proposed scientific activities of these institutions founded by two men who made material things but never lost touch with the spiritual world which gave direction and discipline to all their acts.

The Engineering Foundation became an operating instrumentality in April, 1915, and in a year from that time it was called upon to engage in a scientific enterprise which, in my opinion, has proved to be of the very greatest national importance. In April, 1916, it appeared that we were to become involved in the World War on account of the sinking of the _Sussex_ by German submarines. The charter of the National Academy of Sciences, passed by Congress and approved by President Lincoln in 1863, provides that “the Academy shall, whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science and art.” The early records indicate that during its very earliest days the National Academy of Sciences, under the leadership of Joseph Henry, and while the Civil War was still going on, dealt actively with scientific research relating to military and naval problems. It was, therefore, perfectly natural that, in view of the threatening crisis, the National Academy of Sciences should, in April, 1916, offer its services to the President of the United States, who accepted them and requested the Academy to organize the scientific and technical resources of the country in the broadest and most effective manner. This is how the _National Research Council_ was born. It is the offspring of the National Academy of Sciences. The mother was born during the Civil War, and the offspring was born during the World War. Blessed be the country which even in times of war creates institutions the highest aim of which is to cultivate the arts of peace!

The members of the National Academy of Sciences are elected on account of distinguished services to science, and not on account of their cleverness as administrators or organizers. The National Research Council was to be organized for the purpose of “stimulating research in mathematical, physical, and biological sciences, and in the application of these sciences to engineering, agriculture, medicine, and other useful arts, with the object of increasing knowledge, of strengthening the national defense, and of contributing in other ways to the public welfare.” The words just quoted are taken from President Wilson’s executive order, and describe a splendid conception. But from conception to reduction to practice is a long pull, requiring efforts along most practical lines of endeavor in which scientific men as a rule do not excel. But it was very fortunate for the National Academy of Sciences and for the people of the United States that among the scientists of the Academy there was one man who had always displayed just as remarkable a genius for organization as he had for original scientific research; I mean Professor George Ellery Hale, director of the Mount Wilson Observatory. Several other members of the Academy, including myself, did our best to aid him in the task of reducing to practice many of his ideas relating to the National Research Council. There was, fortunately, one thing which greatly assisted our earliest and most difficult efforts in behalf of this national movement; it was the existence of the Engineering Foundation.

My former pupil, Gano Dunn, was in 1916 the chairman of the Engineering Foundation, and I was one of the two vice-chairmen. It did not cost me much effort to persuade Dunn that one of the biggest tasks which the Engineering Foundation could take up was to grubstake the National Research Council during its formative period. The Board of the Foundation accepted enthusiastically this suggestion, recommended by Mr. Dunn and myself, and from September 1916 to September 1917 the administrative organization as well as the total income of the Foundation was devoted to the organizing work of the National Research Council. I am very proud that during a part of that period I was the chairman of the Engineering Foundation, succeeding Mr. Dunn, and had splendid opportunities to aid Professor Hale and his committees in the historic work of organizing the National Research Council. Mr. Swasey was very happy in this national work of the Foundation, and he added to its income for that year a sum of five thousand dollars as additional aid for its great undertaking. At the expiration of that year, the National Research Council did not need any further financial assistance from the Engineering Foundation, but the co-operation started in 1916 between the two national bodies continued and produced splendid results; so much so that in 1918, during my term of office as chairman of the Foundation, Mr. Swasey added one hundred thousand dollars to his original gift, and in 1920 two hundred thousand dollars more, and the Engineering Foundation became the guiding and controlling factor in the activities of the engineering division of the National Research Council. Mr. Swasey always hoped that others would follow his example and by their generous contribution increase the income of the Engineering Foundation to what it should be. This institution, as the directing instrument of the engineering division of the National Research Council, could, with an adequate annual income, say one hundred thousand dollars or more, do a world of good in the research of our great national engineering problems. I trust that Mr. Swasey’s hopes will not meet with disappointment, because his hopes are based upon his accurate estimate of what the engineering profession needs. An estimate supported by the judgment and vision of a Swasey, and by his generous financial efforts, should receive the most respectful attention and warmest sympathy of our public-spirited men.

It goes without saying that during the World War the National Research Council was organized mainly with a view to aiding the government in the pursuit of the war, and for that purpose it was closely associated with the government’s scientific bureaus, and with the technical department of the Army and Navy. This arrangement is referred to, and receives the highest official sanction, in the executive order issued by President Wilson, which I quote now in full:

EXECUTIVE ORDER ISSUED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

The National Research Council was organized in 1916 at the request
of the President by the National Academy of Sciences, under its
Congressional charter, as a measure of national preparedness. The
work accomplished by the Council in organizing research and in
securing co-operation of military and civilian agencies in the
solution of military problems demonstrates its capacity for larger
service. The National Academy of Sciences is therefore requested to
perpetuate the National Research Council, the duties of which shall
be as follows:

1. In general, to stimulate research in the mathematical, physical,
and biological sciences, and in the application of these sciences
to engineering, agriculture, medicine, and other useful arts, with
the object of increasing knowledge, of strengthening the national
defense, and of contributing in other ways to the public welfare.

2. To survey the larger possibilities of science, to formulate
comprehensive projects of research, and to develop effective means
of utilizing the scientific and technical resources of the country
for dealing with these projects.

3. To promote co-operation in research, at home and abroad, in
order to secure concentration of effort, minimize duplication, and
stimulate progress; but in all co-operative undertakings to give
encouragement to individual initiative, as fundamentally important
to the advancement of science.

4. To serve as a means of bringing American and foreign
investigators into active co-operation with the scientific and
technical services of the War and Navy Departments and with those
of the civil branches of the Government.

5. To direct the attention of scientific and technical
investigators to the present importance of military and industrial
problems in connection with the war, and to aid in the solution of
these problems by organizing specific researches.

6. To gather and collate scientific and technical information
at home and abroad, in co-operation with governmental and other
agencies and to render such information available to duly
accredited persons.

Effective prosecution of the Council’s work requires the cordial
collaboration of the scientific and technical branches of the
Government, both military and civil. To this end representatives
of the Government, upon the nomination of the National Academy
of Sciences, will be designated by the President as members of
the Council, as heretofore, and the heads of the departments
immediately concerned will continue to co-operate in every way that
may be required.

(Signed) WOODROW WILSON.
The White House, May 11, 1918.

During the World War the National Research Council was only partly supported by the government, although it did exclusively government work. After the war, however, the activities of the National Research Council were reorganized without departing from the spirit of the President’s executive order, and its support was derived from private sources only. Its organization can be described broadly as follows:

It consists of two groups of divisions; one group comprises seven divisions of science and technology, representing, respectively, physics, mathematics, and astronomy; chemistry and chemical technology; biology and agriculture; the medical sciences; psychology and anthropology; geology and geography; and, finally, one of the largest and most important of its divisions, the division of engineering. The other group comprises six divisions of general relations, representing foreign relations, government relations, state relations, educational relations, research extension, and research information. In this scheme of organization the National Research Council enjoys the active co-operation of about seventy-five major scientific and technical societies of the country. It is, therefore, national in its character. It promises to become one of the most precious assets of this nation, and the nation should know much more about it than it does.

The splendid work done by the Council even during the first two years of its history attracted much attention from the best men in the country, with the result that the trustees of the Carnegie Corporation of New York made a gift of five million dollars to the Council. A part of this, a little over one-quarter, was to be spent on an administrative building, the future home of the Academy and of its offspring, the National Research Council. The remainder was to be a permanent foundation from the income of which the administrative work of the Council was to be and is now being supported.

The Rockefeller Foundation and the Rockefeller General Education Board gave the Council one million dollars for the maintenance, during five years, of research fellowships in physics and chemistry, and in medicine. Other gifts came from philanthropic organizations, individual concerns, and individuals, for the support of special scientific projects, and more than a score of individuals interested in the promotion of science contributed two hundred thousand dollars for the purchase of land in Washington on which the administration building of the Academy and Council has been under construction during the last two years.

Honorary Chairman of the National Research Council]

Facing the Mall near the Lincoln memorial in Washington stands to-day, nearly completed, the administrative palace of the National Academy of Sciences and of its offspring, the National Research Council. The classical simplicity of its design and its snowy marble make it appear at a distance like a Grecian temple. It will always invite the visitor to the nation’s capital to its peaceful precincts, whence one can get the impressive view of the beautiful monument to great Lincoln and of the Arlington heights on the distant bank of the Potomac River. When Lincoln and those buried on these sacred heights died, the National Academy of Sciences was born. The lives of these dead heroes of sixty years ago, as well as the life of the institution born then and living to-day, will always remind us that national defense is a stern reality and the most sacred of our patriotic duties. National defense is and always should be the uppermost idea in the history of the National Research Council, but national defense in its broadest sense, that is, defense by powder and sword and scientific invention when a brutal enemy attacks us, and by the stored-up accomplishments of scientifically trained intellects and disciplined spirits whenever this nation engages in peaceful competitions with other nations.

From a preliminary sketch by the architect,
Bertram G. Goodhue]

The rapid rise of the Council into public favor is due principally to its wise programme and to the standing of the men and of the scientific organizations engaged in the carrying out of that programme, the fundamental feature of which is “to promote scientific research and the application and dissemination of scientific knowledge for the benefit of our national strength and well-being.” This expression, often heard within the ranks of the National Research Council, always reminds me of the following words in Washington’s Farewell Address:

Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for
the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure
of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that
public opinion should be enlightened.

In no branch of human activity does public opinion need enlightenment so much as it does in the fundamentals of science, and in their relation to technical arts. One weak point in every democracy, particularly when poorly understood and practised, is the belief among those who control political patronage that any man can do any job as well as any other man. The scientific man believes that a man must be trained for the job; hence his profound respect for the expert. Nothing in his opinion will advance our national strength and well-being so much as the ability of enlightened public opinion to differentiate between the expert and the clumsy product of political patronage. A motto of the Allies in the World War was: make the world safe for democracy. But those who are to-day associated in the National Research Council believe that it is even more important to “make democracy safe for the world” by the dissemination of scientific knowledge for the benefit of national strength and well-being. Many of us believe that this is the most important part of the national defense, to which the Council will always be pledged.

The National Research Council is not an organization which operates scientific laboratories; it confines its attention to the stimulation of co-operation between scientific workers, where such co-operation is necessary. This is not the place to discuss in detail all the aims and aspirations of the National Research Council and of the instrumentalities which it has created in order to reach these aims. A survey, even a brief one, of the work of the divisions belonging to the two groups of the National Research Council will give some idea of these aims. There are, however, two great aims which should be mentioned here, which have been well expressed by Doctor Vernon Kellogg, Permanent Secretary of the Council and chairman of its division on Educational Relations. He describes one of them as follows: “It [the National Research Council] will try constantly to encourage the interest of universities and colleges in research and in the training of research workers, so that the inspiration and fitting of American youth for scientific work may never fall so low as to threaten to interrupt the constantly needed output of well-trained and devoted scientific talent in the land.” The other principal aim he describes in the following significant words: “Still another [assistance to science] is the stimulation of larger industrial organizations, which may be in the situation to maintain their own independent laboratories, to see the advantage of contributing to the support of pure science in the universities and research institutes, for the sake of increasing the scientific knowledge and scientific personnel upon which future progress in applied science absolutely depends.”