pursuing these ideas. Ames would have given the researcher his head, whereas Lewis wanted such initiative pursued only with the approval of headquarters.17

This difference in perspective is apparent in the different ways they dealt with Max Munk. Ames was genuinely proud of Munk and his contributions to the Committee. He spoke of the Committee's irreparable loss when Munk left. Lewis was not unmindful of Munk's contributions, but he had to deal with the man every day, and when they parted company it was with bitterness and hard words. Ames could contemplate the advance of aeronautics from his study in Baltimore, but Lewis had to make the NACA organization function, and for that he needed discipline, order, and team players. In 1931 Lewis sent to Langley laboratory the following quotation from a recent speech by Herbert Hoover in praise of Thomas Edison:

I may emphasize that both scientific discovery and its practical application are the products of long and arduous research. Discovery and invention do not spring full-grown from the brains of men. The labor of a host of men, great laboratories, long, patient, scientific experiment build up the structure of knowledge, not stone by stone, but particle by particle. This adding of fact to fact some day brings forth a revolutionary discovery, an illuminating hypothesis, a great generalization or practical invention. 18

To Lewis, this summary "so aptly cover[ed] the aims and purposes of the Committee" that he directed it be framed at Langley and hung in the office of the engineer-in-charge or the corridor of the administration building.

Lewis and Ames viewed the work of the Committee from different vantage points, Lewis from the engineer's, Ames from the scientist's. In large measure they agreed, but clearly disagreed in subtle ways difficult to document. Understanding these slightly different perspectives makes the following extract from the Annual Report of 1930 more revealing.

Previous summaries of the progress in aerodynamic development called attention to the fact that the main theoretical foundations of this new science have been firmly laid and that the present work is necessarily restricted to extensions of or additions to existing theory. This does not mean that no important theoretical work is being done; it means that practically all of the present work is along lines previously laid out and that no new outstanding general problems are in sight. With this explanation it may be stated with confidence that problems of a basic or fundamental nature are now receiving far more attention than at any time in the past...

19

In other words, Munk was no longer needed. Nor did the researcher need much guidance in staying on course. The NACA (read George Lewis) knew where it was going, and decisions on how to get there would be more political than theoretical: how to avoid duplication, how to answer the needs of industry and the services, how to stay off the toes of others in the field. There was a hazard in this attitude. It contains a serious logical inconsistency, but it was one that both George Lewis and Joseph Ames could live with. Anyone who approaches scientific research with the assumption that the existing theoretical framework is both correct and adequate is unlikely to discover evidence at odds with that framework. The essence of scientific research is skepticism and unbiased evaluation of evidence. The excerpt from the 1930 Report implies condemnation of Munk's style of research, the pursuit of original ideas that might be brilliant or crazy. Lewis could not tolerate such a pursuit in his day-to-day running of the laboratory; Ames, more inclined by nature and experience to indulge it, had to guard against antagonizing the Committee's clients and supporters. Lewis and Victory drafted the report out of their concern for engineering and administration; Ames signed it presumably out of his concern for politics. If the report fell short of his ideal of a research ethic, it nevertheless addressed itself to fundamental research and claimed as much as was possible for a government agency.

20

The research process worked out by Ames and Lewis in the early 1920s and instituted in full after Munk's departure was a compromise of sorts, but one that worked exceedingly well. It allowed for review of all NACA research when first proposed and at various intervals thereafter. Because the technical subcommittees evaluating and monitoring the research contained experts in the various branches of aeronautics, there was some guarantee that the subjects chosen for research were the best and most promising ones. Because the Executive Committee contained representatives of all the parties interested in aeronautical development (except industry), there was some guarantee that duplication was being avoided and that the NACA was not straying into someone else's territory. In practice, Lewis and Ames often gave their approval-individually or jointly-to some research project without consulting either the technical subcommittee or the Executive Committee.21 When there was any doubt, however, they fell back on the process, for there lay consensus and caution. The system may have lacked brilliance and inspiration, but it provided a rational and defensible system of research selection.

The Committee did retain some of the daring and originality of Max Munk in its development of research equipment. The success of the variable-density wind tunnel enhanced the reputation of the Committee and emboldened Lewis to propose a new departure. When it

was suggested to Lewis that propeller research had reached an impasse because the scaling corrections required for the small tunnels then available yielded unsatisfactory results for the high tip-speeds then of interest, he took the problem to Munk. With the latter's concurrence, Lewis initiated a request for funds to build a propeller-research tunnel with an unprecedented 6-meter throat that would allow full-scale testing of propellers and would obtain results comparable to those achieved in the variable-density tunnel for airfoil and airplane models. The power required to run air through such a tunnel at an acceptable speed was enormous, but that bothered neither Munk nor Lewis. They saw the request through Congress and had construction under way in less than a year."

22

The propeller-research tunnel, which went into service in 1927, proved as revolutionary and effective as the variable-density tunnel. By the time another dramatically new tunnel was proposed, Munk was no longer with the Committee, but Lewis went ahead on his own. In 1928 he recommended construction of a full-scale wind tunnel that could accommodate actual aircraft. At the time, the propeller-research tunnel had the largest throat of any in the world (6 meters) and most tunnels

were in the class of the other two at Langley, 1.5 meters at the test section. Lewis was proposing nothing less than a tunnel with a test section 9 by 18 meters. Because the other tunnels had been so successful and so productive, the Bureau of the Budget and Congress approved even this huge request, and the fiscal 1930 budget included $525,000 in construction funds to begin the work. This single tunnel would finally cost almost three times as much as all the other buildings constructed at Langley in the laboratory's first 12 years, including 3 laboratory buildings, the atmospheric tunnel, the variable-density tunnel, hangars, and the propeller-research tunnel. 23

In the same year that this money was appropriated, Congress also allotted to the NACA $208,000 to construct a towing tank to study seaplanes. This project also was recommended by Lewis, this time on the basis of a trip to Europe to examine the laboratories of the competition. 24 With the NACA's reputation and boldness growing, the Committee was now trying to secure its newly won position as the best equipped and most productive aeronautical-research establishment in the world.

The building program of the late 1920s was heady stuff, but-like all intoxicants-it had its dangers. In this case the hazard was that the tools of research would become more important than the research itself. The new wind tunnels were magnificent engineering specimens, the kind of machine with which an engineer could easily become enamored. A researcher forced, for lack of equipment, to stand at his blackboard or look out the window is not likely to lose sight of the big picture. Too often, that is all he sees, for he lacks the wherewithal to test or pursue his ideas. On the other hand, if an engineer has a wind tunnel he will use it-and it will use him. The NACA engineers at Langley Field, possessed of the best research equipment in the world, climbed into their tunnels and promptly lost sight of events outside those narrow chambers. They produced magnificent results in applied aerodynamics, but, as time went by, other fields would need-and fail to receive-equal attention.

INDUSTRY AS CLIENT

The danger was not apparent in the late 1920s, years of growth and promise and excitement. The events of 1926 and 1927 had created a boom in American aviation, and the NACA was riding high on a crest that carried along other elements of the field as well. Not least of these was the aircraft-manufacturing industry, recovering at last from the collapse that followed World War I. Orders for new and improved aircraft were pouring in from the military and from private carriers,

and industry turned to the NACA for answers to the problems posed by these requests. The NACA, for its part, took the industry's demands seriously, believing that both civil and military aviation were worthy of experimental research. The Committee went so far as to state in 1927 that "civil aviation must in itself be regarded as one of the most important factors of civilization."25

Industry's need for NACA research and the Committee's determination to help industry raised the question of how the parties should communicate. How should the industry make its needs known to the NACA? How should the Committee report its results to industry? The simplest and most direct solution was membership on the Main Committee and the main technical committees for industry representatives. Suggestions of this sort had been made as early as 1919 but had always been rejected. Industry representation had been limited mostly to the technical subcommittees. In the years between the world wars, industry maintained about the same relative strength in numbers while making some positional gains. The Aerodynamics Committee never had industry representatives. Power Plants for Aircraft did briefly, but these were purged soon after World War I. Materials for Aircraft always had representatives from industry, largely because there was no other source of expertise in fields such as metallurgy for aircraft. Industry representatives also appeared in the 1920s on subcommittees of Materials for Aircraft, such as the subcommittees on Metals and Aircraft Structures. When the Committee on Problems of Air Navigation was formed in 1928, it contained industry representatives, including one who was chairman of the Subcommittee on Problems of Communication. 26

From the industry's point of view, however, it seemed that the technical committees proposed and the Main Committee disposed. The Main Committee made the final decisions on the course of NACA research, at least nominally, and it was there that the industry looked for representation. The strongest voice in support of such a move in the 1920s was Edward P. Warner, the former chief scientist at LMAL in 1919 and 1920. Warner spoke with authority, for his remarkable career in aeronautics was already well launched. From LMAL, he had returned to MIT to teach aeronautics. In 1926, at the age of 31, he was appointed the first Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aeronautics. Three years later, after moving from the navy to the editorship of Aviation, Warner was appointed a member of the NACA. 27

Since 1920 Warner had been a member of the Committee on Materials, and with that experience in mind he wrote to Ames in 1927 recommending more "liberal representation to industrial and other non-governmental . . . interests" on the main technical committees,