III

CONTRIBUTIONS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE

ROBERT A. MILLIKAN

ROM the days of Alexander and Cæsar, if not from periods

FROM

even more remote, the engineer has been a vital adjunct of a successful army; for war machines have always had to be built and operated, bridges thrown across rivers, roads rendered passable, new terrain surveyed and new fortifications designed and constructed. These and their like have been from the earliest times the standardized operations of the Engineer Corps of every army. But there is another and a quite distinct rôle which the physical sciences played in the great war. For never in the history of warfare up to the year 1914 had the whole scientific brains of any nation been systematically mobilized for the express purpose of finding immediately new ways of applying the accumulated scientific knowledge of the world to the ends of war.

It is not my purpose in this chapter to deal with the standardized operations of the technical corps of the army and navy during the great war. For this I have no competence. I shall endeavor rather to pass in rapid review the most significant of the newer developments which were due in large measure to the organized activities of scientists who, until the great war, had no association with things military. Many of these scientists, like the writer, became connected during the war either as officers or as civilian employees with the military departments of the Government. But whatever our official connection with the military service, we were all associated in our scientific activities through the National Research Council,

which acted in the United States as the great clearing house of scientific information, and as a coördinating and stimulating agency for scientific research and development work in aid of the war.

So far as developments in the physical sciences are concerned this coördinating and stimulating work was done through three main agencies, namely, first, the executive committee of the Division of Physical Sciences of the Research Council, second, the Research Information Service, and third, the weekly conference of the Physics and Engineering Divisions of the Council.

The National Research Council, being itself a voluntary association for research purposes of the scientific agencies of the country, civilian and governmental, industrial and academic, it was to be expected that the Executive Committee of its Division of Physical Sciences would embrace representatives of important scientific and technical agencies. Its membership was as follows: Prof. J. S. Ames, representing the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, Dr. L. A. Bauer of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Dr. A. L. Day of the Geophysical Laboratory, Major A. L. Leuschner of the Chemical Warfare Service, Dr. C. F. Marvin, Chief of the Weather Bureau, Lt. Col. R. A. Millikan, representing the Signal Corps and the Anti-submarine Board of the Navy, Major F. R. Moulton of the Bureau of Ordnance of the Army, Major C. E. Menedenhall of the Bureau of Aircraft Production, Dr. E. F. Nichols of the Bureau of Ordnance of the Navy, Dr. H. N. Russell, associated with both the Engineer Corps and the Bureau of Aircraft Production, Dr. W. C. Sabine of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the Bureau of Aircraft Production, Dr. Frank Schlesinger of the Bureau of Aircraft Production, General George O. Squier, Chief of the Signal Corps, Dr. S. W. Stratton, Head of the Bureau of Standards and Dr. R. S. Woodward, Head of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

This committee held stated meetings for the formulation of

policies, the initiation of new projects, and for the detailed discussion of the seventy odd major research undertakings which had been initiated in large part at least by the Division and which its members were either directing or closely following. The opportunity both to initiate problems and to follow those initiated elsewhere, particularly abroad, came about chiefly through the most successful functioning of the second agency mentioned above, the Research Information Service.

This service had its inception in the Spring of 1917 when certain British scientists in the British ministry of munitions addressed a letter to General Geo. O. Squier suggesting the development of a liaison between British and American scientists. This letter was referred by General Squier to the Chairman of the Division of Physical Sciences of the National Research Council who laid the matter before the Military Committee of the Council, which committee embraced the heads of the technical bureaus of the navy and army, namely, Admirals Benson, Griffin, Taylor and Earle, and Generals Squier, Black, Crozier and Gorgas, in addition to the heads of civilian technical bureaus like Doctors Marvin and Stratton of the Bureau of Mines and the Bureau of Standards. This body discussed the proposal at some length and concluded that an even more comprehensive plan for bringing about coöperation and preventing duplication was needed. It accordingly appointed a committee consisting of Dr. Walcott, Mr. Howard Coffin, Dr. Stratton and Mr. Millikan to formulate recommendations. The committee formulated a plan which was approved by the Military Committee and then by the Secretaries of War and of the Navy and finally by the President, who appropriated $150,000 from his war emergency fund for carrying the plan into effect. This plan provided for the establishment of four new offices, one in Washington, one in London, one in Paris and one in Rome. The office in Washington was headed by a group of three men: the chief of the Army Intelligence Service, the chief of the Navy Intelligence Service, and the chairman of the National Research Council; the group in London, by the naval

attaché, (Admiral Sims himself) chosen by the National Research Council. The function of the scientific attaché in England, who was Dr. H. A. Bumstead, was to keep in touch with all research activity in that country and to send back almost daily reports to our office in Washington. Similarly, all reports of work done on this side were sent by uncensored mail or by cable to the offices of the scientific attachés in London, Paris and Rome, and distributed from there to the research groups in Europe. The navy coöperated heartily with this plan from the start, and Admiral Sims aided it in every possible way. As for the army, at the request of the General Staff, the Secretary of War issued orders to all army officers who were sent on scientific and technical missions to make duplicate reports, one to the officer who sent them and the other to the office of the scientific attaché, so that there might be a central agency through which an interconnection might be had between all kinds of new developments. The actual functioning of the Research Information Service had most to do with developments in the Physical Sciences.

Furthermore, through the authority conferred by the Military Committee, there was held in Washington at the offices of the National Research Council a weekly conference of the Division of Physical Sciences and of Engineering, which reviewed all the reports from abroad each week and put the workers on this side into the closest touch with the developments on the other side. The whole plan was an admirable illustration of the possibilities of international coöperation in research. In the submarine field, for example, all anti-submarine work in England, France and Italy which was reported by cable and by uncensored mail immediately to the office of the Research Council in Washington, was taken each Saturday night to New London and presented in digested form to the group of scientists which was working there continuously on submarine problems. Similar arrangements were made with the airplane research groups, sound-ranging groups, etc., so