craft manufacturers, including the members of the Aircraft Manufacturers Association, a cooperative newly formed to resolve the industry's problems internally. So far it had been signally unsuccessful. 32

Walcott opened the meeting by contrasting the rapid strides in European aircraft production with the sorry history of American manufacture. The industry was not entirely to blame; in the eight years before 1916, for example, the army had ordered only 59 airplanes, receiving only 54, of which only 22 were from the same manufacturer. Now, however, the threat of war had increased the demand. The army had ordered 366 planes in 1916 but had received only 64. Walcott estimated that the military services would need 4000 planes annually by 1919; if that figure was to be reached, the current deadlock in production would have to be broken.33

Walcott assured the meeting that the NACA viewed legal action against the existing patent only as a last resort. Preferable to the Committee, and no doubt to the manufacturers as well, would be a cross-licensing agreement similar to the one used by the automobile industry. The agreement would require all aircraft manufacturers to join the Aircraft Manufacturers Association, effective 2 March 1917. Each member would pay into the Association $200 for each airplane manufactured. Of that amount, $135 would go to Wright-Martin, $40 to Curtiss, and $25 to the Association for operating expenses. Payments to Wright-Martin would cease on 22 May 1923 when the Wright patent expired. Payments to Curtiss would cease on 30 October 1933 when the last Curtiss patent expired, or whenever the total royalty paid to Curtiss equalled what had been paid to Wright-Martin. This plan tacitly recognized the Wright and Curtiss patent claims as being equally fundamental and valuable. 34

On 24 March, Walcott reported these conclusions to the secretary of war, admitting the NACA's inability to calculate how much money the Wright-Martin and the Curtiss Burgess companies might realize from the agreement. He suggested that the government might prefer simply to buy the patent rights from each company for $1,000,000 apiece, a figure that the company representatives presumably had found acceptable in the course of the meeting. 35

Before anything could be done, external events intervened. The United States declaration of war against Germany on 7 April 1917 instantly changed the outlook for airplane manufacture. Soon French and British missions were in the United States talking about a tenfold increase in the number of planes to be provided by the U.S. Aircraft in such numbers meant that the royalties accruing under the proposed agreement to the Wright-Martin and Curtiss Burgess companies before their patents expired could reach entirely unanticipated levels. Negotia

tions within the Aircraft Manufacturers Association over the exact terms of the cross-licensing agreement broke down. 36

Once more the NACA had to step into the breach. The Subcommittee on Patents was expanded to include Crisp, the patent lawyer responsible for the automobile industry's cross-licensing agreement. A lawyer representing the Wright-Martin company was added to counterbalance Crisp's ties to Curtiss, and William F. Durand was appointed acting chairman. On 14 June, the Executive Committee of the NACA resolved that the total royalties accruing to the Wright and Curtiss companies under any cross-licensing agreement should not exceed $2,000,000. Thereafer, the Patents Subcommittee took over to work out the details. In a series of meetings in June and July with representatives of the Aircraft Manufacturers Association, Crisp and the subcommittee were able to produce an agreement that was acceptable, if not entirely pleasing, to all parties.37

On 12 July 1917 the Subcommittee on Patents submitted to the Executive Committee a proposed cross-licensing agreement that dif fered in some respects from the one prepared by the NACA in March. Besides a ceiling of $2,000,000 on payments to Wright and Curtiss, the new agreement stipulated that it did not cover engines, that royalties for future inventions would be determined by the Aircraft Manufacturers Association on a case-by-case basis, and that the government could hand over designs of one company to another company for manufacture, provided that the latter paid a royalty of one percent of the purchase price of the aircraft. The settlement also established criteria for membership in the Aircraft Manufacturers Association. As finally enacted, in accordance with the views of all the parties, the agreement came to be administered by an entirely new organization: the Manufacturers Aircraft Association, Incorporated. Critical decisions affecting the industry were to be made by a three-man board of directors, one of whom was Joseph S. Ames-professor of physics at Johns Hopkins University, a charter member of the NACA, its future chairman, and a man of unquestioned integrity and impartiality.38

In effect, the cross-licensing agreement of 1917 established that the American aviation industry would operate without major patents. Small royalties would be paid for certain contributions within the Manufacturers Aircraft Association, but in general the ideas and techniques of aircraft manufacturers were to be shared openly among the members.

Durand reported the accomplishment to the secretary of the navy in language expressing the genial optimism and self-satisfaction felt by the interested parties. "It is expected," concluded Durand, “that this agreement will bring about harmony and co-operation in the industry, and that it will aid materially in the progress of the art and the quantity production of aircraft." Daniels replied, thanking Durand and the

NACA for the “amicable settlement of the perplexing patent situation" and for saving the government in the process the $1,000,000 that had been appropriated to buy up the patents. Within a week the NACA discharged its Subcommittee on Patents with thanks for a job well done.39 The whole complex mess thrown in the Committee's lap in January could hardly have been resolved more quickly or satisfactorily.

Into that blissful atmosphere of self-congratulation the first cry of Foul! burst like a bombshell. The Aeronautical Society of America— successor to the group that had been campaigning for an aeronautical laboratory ever since that fateful banquet of 1911 at which President Taft was supposed to endorse the plan-wired President Wilson on 14 August that it was hard pressed to construe the agreement as anything less than an aircraft trust. The president had no idea what they were talking about. Soon enough the telegram came to Durand for a reply, but his efforts to appease the Aeronautical Society were unavailing. Society President F.W. Barker took little comfort in the precedent of "the vicious Selden patent trust," which he thought had been "deliberately created to 'keep out the small fellows.'" He felt that the aircraft cross-licensing agreement was a similar trust in restraint of trade whose effect would be to sacrifice "the interests of investors" to the profits of the large manufacturers, profits he considered unwarranted by any aeronautical patent granted so far. He was disturbed that the Justice Department had not been consulted on the legality of the agreement, and he told Durand that the society believed the whole matter lay "entirely beyond the purpose of your training, and in fact, even beyond the powers granted by Congress to your organization." 40

After a fruitless exchange of letters, Durand refused to carry on any further correspondence. Barker refused his invitation to come to Washington to discuss the matter in person, so communications broke down completely. On 4 September, Durand wrote to Walcott that "we are just now having a merry round with the Aeronautical Society of America," but there was little merriment in the outcome. A "virtual hymn of hate" poured from the small but vocal minority opposed to the crosslicensing agreement. It was little abated when in October 1917, at the NACA's request, the Justice Department examined the agreement and pronounced it legal and proper. The opposition was even refueled the following year when the government amended the agreement by halving the royalty paid to Wright and Curtiss, a tacit admission that the original terms had been too generous.41

Time did nothing to lessen the acrimony of the debate over crosslicensing. Defenders of the agreement claimed its critics were paid by, and in the service of, enemies of the United States. The critics for their part used every possible occasion to roll out the cross-licensing agreement and rehash the old charges of "aircraft trust." These charges

were never substantiated, though even the most ardent defenders of the agreement could not deny that it worked to the advantage of large established companies at the expense of the small private inventor.42 Thus in its earliest days the NACA was drawn into a controversy over favoritism and special privilege, the very charges it had tried so hard to dispel both in its membership policies and in its all-encompassing boosterism. The image of being in bed with industry, while never very pronounced in the early years, was lurking in the background ready to come into focus whenever the cross-licensing agreement came up for another public airing.

Reading through the internal papers on the negotiations leading up to the cross-licensing agreement, one sees in the NACA's words and actions signs of real patriotism and sincerity, a zealous concern for the national security, a selfless enthusiasm for the future of aviation, and a genuine desire to serve the public interest. But at times the public interest overlapped the interests of the members of the NACA and those with whom they dealt in a way that was perhaps inevitable but surely unfortunate. However pure their motives, however constrained they might be by necessity and circumstance, however successful their handiwork, the members of the NACA would live out their years amidst whispers and suspicions, under the shadow of the cross-licensing agreement, an agreement they had regarded at the time as their finest achievement.43

BUILDING A FUTURE

The part played by the NACA in the cross-licensing agreement was just a special case of the Committee's general wartime role as an inventions board for the War Department. Unsolicited inventions and suggestions relating to aeronautics were sent from outside sources to the Committee for screening and evaluation. Most proved worthless and were summarily rejected. Some, however, showed promise (or at least possibility) and were referred to the army or the navy for further test and evaluation.44

This function of the Committee was essentially advisory, as was most of its work during World War I. When Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels asked the Committee to consider how the United States might best develop and produce aircraft for the impending military crisis, the NACA recommended establishment of an Aircraft Production Board as an adjunct to the Council of National Defense. This board, duly established, went on to become the major mechanism for government procurement of aircraft. The NACA also recommended adoption of the metric system and government underwriting of insurance for aviators. To the secretary of agriculture, it recommended

extension of the Weather Bureau's aerological work in support of aviation. 45

Two members of the NACA were sent to Europe on official missions. William F. Durand, who in 1917 had been elected chairman of the NACA when Walcott declined the nomination, was sent to Paris under joint orders from the secretaries of war and the navy to serve in the Research Information Service, recently created by the National Research Council to funnel technical information from the fighting front to the United States. Durand retained his NACA membership throughout his service in Europe, even though he could not participate actively in routine Committee business for the remainder of the war.46

Joseph S. Ames of Johns Hopkins University in nearby Baltimore, who was one of the NACA's more active and promising members, led a scientific mission to Europe in the spring of 1917, also under the auspices of the National Research Council. The commission succeeded in its major goal-the rapid exchange of war-related scientific and technical information between the Allies and the United States-but it had an unfortunate consequence for Ames personally and for the NACA. It established Ames in the minds of some as an expert on the role of the U.S. in World War I and lent disproportionate weight to his pessimistic view of American aircraft manufacture, formed during an inspection tour the following November made in the company of three other NACA members. After that trip, Ames wrote to a friend of an acute "feeling of depression" about the shortage of airplanes, mechanics, and aviation instructors that persisted long after promises to the contrary had been made to him personally. He concluded:

It is very hard to place one's finger on the man or committee responsible for this condition. As far as I could see, the evil is a fundamental one. This country and its officials are possessed with the idea that everything must be labeled 'Made in America,' and the difficulties into which we are now running are those which any man might have foreseen. As a matter of fact, within three days after my return from Europe in June I made this whole matter the subject of my report to the Aircraft Production Committee. No one believed me, and although I had a good solution it was refused.47

This letter found its way into the pages of The Atlantic Monthly, and from there into an editorial in The Outlook revealingly entitled "Is All Well with Our Airplane Programme?" The Outlook editorialist used Ames' experience in Europe and his unquestioned "authority" to raise the spectre of "indolence and lassitude" in official circles, of "the paralysis of official red tape hidden under the plea of military secrecy."48