ards. They, like the other enthusiasts, considered it essential to have aeronautical research funded by the government and conducted in government laboratories.

Nothing in the history of the 1915 legislation suggests that a majority of congressmen shared this view. What Congress approved was a five-year lease on life for a small advisory and coordinating body, whose purpose was modeled on that of the British Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and whose goal seems to have been that of keeping up with the Europeans. No more than a handful of congressmen, most of them in the two committees on naval affairs, really knew much about the purpose or intent of the amendment to the Naval Appropriations Act. The wording was vague and general, silent on where the advisory committee might go and what it might do. The section about a laboratory seemed an afterthought, and no funds were provided for its operation.

The factors responsible for passage of the legislation were the persistent and enthusiastic sponsorship of a small group of true believers in aviation, the backing of scientists and engineers associated with aeronautics but uncertain how to divide the field between themselves, the good offices of the Smithsonian Institution (which wanted in part, at least, to memorialize the work of Langley), the skillful political maneuvering of Secretary Walcott, the assistance of a few well-placed congressmen, the war in Europe that aroused concern for American preparedness, the Progressive enthusiasm for efficiency and distrust of special interests, and the modest scope and general language of the legislation.

The NACA's organic legislation was not a mandate but an opportunity.

2

War Business: A Laboratory and Licensing; Committees and Engines, 1915-1918

If the men responsible for creating the NACA had a goal when they set out, the Committee's organic legislation failed to make clear just what that goal was or how they might achieve it. The legislation, in fact, contributed to the confusion surrounding American aviation and added yet another agency to the number of government and private institutions struggling to penetrate the chaos. More than a year after the NACA was created, Charles Walcott could still lament "that things are very uncertain about aeronautics . . . ; in fact, that we are almost ignorant of what aviation means.”1

WHAT TO Do

This uncertainty and lack of direction was evident when the NACA met for the first time 23 April 1915 in the office of the secretary of war. Brig. Gen. George P. Scriven, chief signal officer of the army and ex officio head of army aviation, was elected temporary chairman, apparently because the meeting place was an army office and Walcott happened to be absent. Also, Scriven had presented to the Committee* a long letter outlining a proposed system of organization and suggesting that the Committee use its influence to support requests by the military services for increased aviation budgets. As if to balance the services within the NACA, Naval Constructor Holden C. Richardson was elected secretary. With these officers installed, the Committee took its first official action: adding the word National to its name, filling out the acronym NACA by which it was thereafter known and distinguish

The proliferation of committees and subcommittees within the NACA, itself a committee, creates some problems of terminology. The capitalized term “Committee” will be used synonymously with the NACA as an agency throughout this study, and "committee" will refer to whatever committee is being discussed. The "Main Committee” (i.e., the NACA) and “Executive Committee" will be so identified where necessary.

ing itself from the British Advisory Committee for Aeronautics after which it was modeled and named.2

The first substantive business was to approve a set of operating rules, which had been called for in the organic legislation, drafted by Walcott, and circulated in his absence. The Committee readily agreed to meet twice a year, in October and April, and at such other special meetings as the chairman might call. The members also agreed that a seven-man Executive Committee elected by and from the membership of the Main Committee "shall control the administration of the affairs of the Committee, and shall have general supervision of all arrangements for research, and other matters undertaken or promoted by the Advisory Committee," acting, of course, "in accordance with the general instructions of the Advisory Committee." As Walcott put it some years later, the Executive Committee was to be "the working organization." 3

All this was structural; nothing functional was accomplished at this first meeting. Rather, the NACA followed the path it would take throughout its history when faced with a problem: it formed a committee. It elected an Executive Committee, instructing the members "to

consider a program of investigation and procedure which shall be intended to carry into practical effect the purposes of the Act creating the Advisory Committee and to report the same with recommendations." The Executive Committee met the same afternoon, chose Walcott chairman in absentia, and adjourned until he could be present.4

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had its first meeting in the office of the secretary of war, 23 April 1915. Seated, left to right: Professor William F. Durand, Stanford University; Dr. S. W. Stratton, director, National Bureau of Standards; Brig. Gen. George P. Scriven, chief signal officer, War Department; Dr. Charles P. Marvin, chief, United States Weather Bureau; Professor Michael I. Pupin, Columbia University. Standing: Naval Constructor Holden C. Richardson; Professor John F. Hayford, Northwestern University; Captain Mark L. Bristol, director of naval aeronautics; Lt. Col. Samuel Reber, Army Signal Corps, in charge of aviation section. Also present but not in the picture were Professor Joseph S. Ames, Johns Hopkins University, and the Honorable Byron R. Newton, assistant secretary of the Treasury. Absent was Charles D. Walcott, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. (LaRC)

Even before Walcott chaired his first Executive Committee meeting, he began to make his presence felt. The Main Committee had deleted from the draft of rules and regulations sent to President Wilson the original suggestion by Walcott that the NACA should appoint subcommittees, chaired by members of the Main Committee but including outsiders as well. Scriven had been opposed to having any subcommittees at all, feeling that they were "apt to lead to confusion and lack of progress." He wanted to see the Main Committee subdivided into an administrative board of government members, a science board of private members, and an executive council of three members