establishment of a national aeronautical laboratory."7 President Taft was to lend his prestige and unofficial approval to this enterprise by heading the list of distinguished guests at the dinner. The secretary of the navy, the commissioner of patents, the chief of the Weather Bureau, the chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and the chancellor of New York University were among the public officials, academics, businessmen, and aviators who would vote by their presence at the banquet for the advancement of aeronautics in the United States. The Aeronautical Society was only one among many such clubs forming at the time to enlist public and private support for aviation. Though the character of these groups was business, and their principal goal was the fostering of commercial aviation, they were alive to the importance of military aviation as well. Their aim was to take flying out of the hands of barnstormers and stunt men who were giving it a bad name and an alarming safety record, and place it instead in the hands of serious businessmen, sportsmen, and public officials who would give it the support and regulation it needed to catch up with European achievements. These were earnest, well-to-do, public-spirited men of established position and reliable views, men with whom President Taft could dine in comfort and congeniality. Their endorsement of a national aeronautical laboratory, especially if the announcement were made by Taft himself as was expected, would give the project a promising future.

But the endorsement never came. On 10 April, the Washington Star reported that the proposed laboratory was to be administered by the Smithsonian Institution and located at the National Bureau of Standards. This scoop set off a bureaucratic struggle in Washington that doomed what might have been an easy birth for a national aeronautical laboratory. The opening salvo was fired by Rear Admiral R.M. Watt, chief of the navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair. A week before the date of the Aeronautical Society banquet, he protested to the secretary of the navy that the establishment of a laboratory under Smithsonian control at the Bureau of Standards would result in a duplication of work and organization of the type recently denounced by the president's own Commission on Economy and Efficiency in Government. The experimental model basin at the Washington Navy Yard, Admiral Watt argued, was already equipped to investigate "a considerable portion of the phenomena associated with aeronautics" because "the character of motion, the effect of variation in stream lines, and the theory and mathematics of the motions are almost identical whether in water or air."9 This single objection, no doubt brought to President Taft's attention by Navy Secretary George Meyer, who was also to attend the Aeronautical Society banquet, seems to have dissuaded Taft

from making the expected announcement. Instead, the issue remained in Washington, where it encountered still more bureaucratic opposition. The Bureau of Engineering added its objection to that of the Bureau of Construction and Repair, noting that the Engineering Experiment Station at Annapolis was also capable of aeronautical research. The secretary of the navy then proposed that, in lieu of establishing a laboratory under the control of the Smithsonian Institution and the Bureau of Standards, the government assign responsibility for all "laboratory investigations of aeronautical matters" to the navy. 10 That, of course, was unsatisfactory to the army. The secretary of war replied that, in spite of the possible duplication involved, the army would have to conduct its own aeronautical research. At this juncture the dispute was referred to the Commission on Economy and Efficiency in Government, where, not surprisingly, it died.11

THE CHAMBers Report

The forces behind the original Aeronautical Society proposal were not easily deterred. Two men were especially important in the next stage of the struggle. Captain W. Irving Chambers, since 1910 the secretary of the navy's special adviser on aviation matters, had been author of the first proposal for a laboratory under the Smithsonian and the Bureau of Standards, and it had been in fact his independent and irascible nature that had touched off opposition to the plan within the navy. His attachment to the European scheme of organizing laboratories and his disregard of the jealously guarded prerogatives of the navy's Bureaus of Engineering and of Construction and Repair had frustrated the first attempt to establish a laboratory. But he was nothing if not stubborn. He believed a laboratory was essential not only to the navy but also to the entire country, and he meant to secure one, if not through the Aeronautical Society, then some other way. In his second attempt he was joined by Albert F. Zahm, a man of many accomplishments: professor of mechanics at Catholic University, aerodynamic researcher of note, secretary of the Aero Club of Washington, governor of the Aero Club of America, consulting editor of the Aero Club of America Bulletin, and consultant to the National Bureau of Standards. Like Chambers, Zahm was a true believer in aviation. Like Chambers, he wanted to see an aeronautical laboratory on the European model established in the United States. Unlike Chambers, he was politic and deferential, unburdened by service rivalry, graced with the mantle of academic impartiality.

Together the two men led a spirited campaign in 1912 to revive the idea of a national laboratory under the Smithsonian Institution. Zahm used the Aero Club Bulletin to spread the gospel. In the February

issue, for instance, he contrasted the "symmetrical, rapid, and continuous" aeronautical progress being made in Europe with the "halting, haphazard, and fortuitous" advances in the United States. The difference, he claimed, was "systematic development." The United States needed "at least one broadly planned aeronautical institute or laboratory possessing ample endowment and equipment, a wise and devoted directorate, an able and a highly trained technical staff." Without mentioning the Smithsonian by name, he made clear where and how he thought the lab should be established:

Wherever an appropriation for an aeronautical establishment may be placed, it is of cardinal importance that the directorate and personnel, as well as the endowment, shall be of the same high character as those found in the leading European countries, if not directly modeled after them, and it would doubtless enhance the prestige and efficiency of the institute to have it connected with an established institution having a reputation in the prosecution of theoretical and applied science. 12

The following month, Zahm made clear what the product of this laboratory might be and how it might be used. The "staff of trained specialists," he wrote, "shall furnish physical constants, laws, formulas, and empirical data of substantial and permanent value to the engineer, the inventor, the manufacturer, whose energies should remain free to employ such knowledge to the advancement of important industrial arts." In other words, this lab was to be an aid to American business, to the manufacture and operation of American aircraft, to what Zahm called (in the typically inflated rhetoric of these enthusiasts) "the early and complete commercial realization of a direct, rapid, and universal system of transportation."13

Men from other circles joined the campaign. Professor A. Lawrence Rotch, a meteorologist, seconded Zahm's views and noted that "the establishment of aerodynamical laboratories . . . marks the entrance of aeronautics into the domain of engineering," where "theoretical knowledge based on experiments" would be the foundation of progress. At the request of the Aero Club of America, Rotch served on a committee on aerodynamics chaired by Zahm "to consider the most feasible method of organizing and maintaining an aeronautical laboratory,” and he agreed with the committee recommendation that a civilian laboratory be established in the United States under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, even though it might duplicate in some respects the research activities planned by the armed services. 14 Richard C. Maclaurin, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, added his endorsement to this campaign, noting that "a knowledge of similar branches of applied science should make it clear that having

reached our present level, we can go higher only by attacking the problems that remain with the patience and persistence of the scientific spirit.” Although Maclaurin affirmed the need for a laboratory, he suggested that it might well be "an enormous advantage to have such experimentation conducted at an institution where there are experts in all departments of science and engineering that have any bearing on aviation."15 (Like MIT, perhaps.)

Captain Chambers also used the Aero Club of America Bulletin to broadcast his message and make peace with the Bureaus of Engineering and of Construction and Repair. Citing the fine contributions already made by the navy's model basin, Chambers suggested that revival of the Langley laboratory at the Smithsonian might provide "an ideal institution which will coordinate the work, not only for the best interests of commerce and business, but for the best interests of the army and navy.' "16 The advocates of a national laboratory were casting their nets ever wider in an attempt to appease their opponents and establish a proposal acceptable to all.

Chambers capped this activity in September 1912 with the most elaborate and detailed proposal yet made for a national aeronautical laboratory, one that seemed to answer the needs of all the participants to date: the businessmen, enthusiasts, aviators, academics, and military men. In his annual "Report on Aviation" to the Bureau of Navigation, published as appendix 1 to the Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy for 1912, Chambers opened with the following summary of the “status of aviation":

The work of established aerodynamic laboratories has transported aeronautics generally into the domain of engineering, in consequence of which aviation has reached a stage of development wherein the methods of scientific engineers have replaced the crude efforts of the pioneer inventors. 17

This veiled allusion to Langley and the Wrights was prelude to a proposal for "A National Aerodynamical Laboratory." Contrasting the sorry record of American naval aviation with the progress being made in the major European countries, Chambers attributed the American shortcomings to lack of appropriations and the absence of an aeronautical laboratory. He proposed a national laboratory in Washington to perform "experimental verification," i.e. tests, for "manufacturers, clubs, independent investigators, and other interested parties," and "experimental research," i.e., "systematic, thorough, and precise investigation of new ideas, or of old ideas with new applications, with the specific intention of discovering laws and formulas for advancing the progress of aerial navigation." He recommended that the work of the

laboratory be selected and supervised by "a council or board, which in England is called the 'advisory committee'" that "should be representative of other Government departments" and "independent of the director and his administrative staff."

As to the composition of the board, Chambers felt: "The council should not be a large body, but should be composed mostly of specialists of unquestioned ability, men interested in the sane development of aerial navigation in various branches of the Government and in its useful and safe adaptation to commerce and sport."

He wanted to see this laboratory located in Washington, because that city was centrally located; it already harbored similar research at the navy yard and elsewhere; it had the interested government agencies, libraries, and other resources-the Langley laboratory, room for an adequate flying field, and a suitable climate for year-round flying; and it was "a mecca for business people." Eventually, he hoped, "some philanthropic patriot of wealth and scientific interest" would endow the laboratory, as had happened in Europe and as he and many of his fellow enthusiasts had long been expecting would happen here. In the meantime, he estimated that $200,000 would be enough to start the laboratory-provided, that is, that use could be made of the buildings already available at the Smithsonian Institution. Otherwise, "the cost could be considerably more."

Here, in fifteen tightly worded pages, were the rationale and the blueprint for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The proposal came from a military officer alive to the military and commercial potential of aviation. He was a true believer in aviation, and he saw scientific research as the key to its development. He looked to Europe and saw there a model of what should be done, and a warning of the hazards of delay. Leading a group of supporters from business, government, and academia, and seasoned by an initial failure, Chambers couched his proposal in the broadest possible terms and was careful to leave to established powers the domains they considered peculiarly theirs. The purpose of the lab, as evidenced by its name, was aerodynamics, a subtle but important change from the aeronautical laboratory of earlier proposals. And there was never any doubt that the laboratory itself was the heart of the proposal. The advisory council was simply a mechanism for ensuring that the work of the lab would be well chosen and properly executed. Establishing it within the Smithsonian Institution would ensure that the small lab had proper protection, would provide access to the Langley facilities lying dormant there, and would lend scientific respectability to an undertaking particularly susceptible to commercialism and amateurism. It would also memorialize and revive the scientific achievements of Langley, and thus rescue the science of flight from "the crude efforts of the pioneer inventors."