It is of considerable historical interest to observe here that Carnegie’s magnificent gift to these national engineering societies is closely connected with a very modest move made by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, nearly thirty years ago. The late Doctor Schuyler Skaats Wheeler, at one time president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, had purchased the famous electrical library of the late Latimer Clark, of London, and had presented it to the Institute. But the Institute had no building of its own, and, therefore, no place for housing permanently this unique library. Several of the members of the Institute, including myself, were looking around anxiously for some practical scheme which would provide the Institute with a home of its own, where the Latimer Clark library could be permanently located. It was obvious that Andrew Carnegie, who was always interested in libraries, should be selected as our first point of application. We never had to appeal to anybody else; Mr. Carnegie was most generous. The engineering societies appealed to his lively imagination. It was the engineer who assisted him in the development of the great steel industry, and it was the engineer upon whom he relied to maintain the American steel industry in the leading position which it had won, in a great measure, by Carnegie’s initiative and efforts. He had already paid a splendid tribute to science for the service it had rendered to him when he created and richly endowed the Carnegie Institution of Washington, which was to provide and does provide ample facilities to American genius in its efforts to solve some of the great problems in science. I mention here as an illustration the endowment of the Mount Wilson Astrophysical Observatory at Pasadena, California, an act which has borne magnificent fruit under Professor George Ellery Hale’s direction. Instead of giving to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers a building for a library, Mr. Carnegie presented to the four national engineering societies a building for their permanent home, with suitable accommodations for a great library, for administrative offices, for conference and meeting rooms, for lecture-rooms, and for a great assembly hall. One of the objects of the United Engineering Society was, according to its charter, to hold and administer this princely gift “for the purpose of advancing the engineering arts and sciences in all their branches and for maintaining a free public engineering library.” The famous Latimer Clark electrical library is now a part of this great engineering library. The four national societies represented by the United Engineering Society have a carefully picked membership of over fifty thousand, and the magnificence of their home on Thirty-ninth Street, near Fifth Avenue, New York, is fully justified by their great prestige. I never look upon this beautiful structure without being thrilled by the thought that the treasures it contains in the form of organized scientific achievement and brains are among the greatest of the many rich assets of this nation.
Sixteen years ago, Mr. Carnegie and myself represented the American Philosophical Society at the memorial service for the late Lord Kelvin, the famous scientist. It was held in the great hall of the Engineering Building. As we sat on the platform, waiting for the commencement of the ceremony, I scanned the beautiful proportions of the great hall, and they appeared to me more beautiful than ever. “You must feel very happy when you look at this splendid gift which you made to the Engineering Society,” said I to Mr. Carnegie, who sat on my right. “I do, yes indeed I do, and I hope that some day you may experience the same feeling of happiness which comes from giving,” responded the great ironmaster. “Perhaps I will,” said I, “but remember that I am a Serb, and not a Scot: it takes a Scot to understand and to practise the art of giving.” “But it also takes a Scot to understand and to practise the art of taking,” said Mr. Carnegie, and his vigorous eyes sparkled with the light of good-natured humor.
Another event occurred in the history of the four founder societies which will always mark the beginning of a new epoch in American science. Another captain of American industry extended a generous hand to the United Engineering Society, offering to aid it in its work of “advancing the engineering arts and sciences in all their branches.” It is very significant that this second generous captain of industry was in many respects a striking contrast to the first, the late Andrew Carnegie. I am speaking now of Ambrose Swasey of Cleveland, Ohio. He, like Carnegie, started his industrial career with very small training in technical sciences. What he knew about engineering and manufacturing he had obtained by practical experience. Ambrose Swasey is a splendid illustration of a disciplined intellect trained by the training of his hand. I have always believed that the most striking difference between the American and the European is due to the fact that the American in his early youth receives a much better manual training than the European does, and that this accounts for the American directness of thought, judgment, and action. I never saw a better illustration of this theory than Mr. Ambrose Swasey. He began his career as a machinist, and when a little over thirty years of age he and a friend of his, Mr. Warner, another young machinist, started a manufacturing plant of their own, making fine machine-tools and astronomical instruments of precision. The shops of Warner and Swasey became famous all over the world for their wonderful workmanship.
The American manufacturer has achieved great things in mass production. This was Mr. Carnegie’s strong point; but Mr. Swasey did not belong to that type of American manufacturer. His aim was few products but each one of them as perfect as careful manipulation, personal attention guided by superior intelligence, and inventive ingenuity, could make it. Most of the telescope mountings of the great astronomical observatories in this country were made in Mr. Swasey’s Cleveland shops. His shop experience made him an engineer of a very high order, so high indeed, that the American Society of Mechanical Engineers elected him president, and, later, honorary member. The charter of the United Engineering Society speaks of “advancing the engineering arts and sciences in all their branches,” but there was no other visible instrumentality for doing that work than the free engineering library. Ambrose Swasey proposed to correct this deficiency when, in 1914, he offered to the United Engineering Society a gift of two hundred thousand dollars as a nucleus for an endowment the income of which was to be used for “the furtherance of research in science and engineering, or for the advancement in any other manner of the profession of engineering and the good of mankind.” These words, dictated by an American captain of industry, bear witness to the fact that there is much idealism in American industry. The United Engineering Society accepted Mr. Swasey’s gift, and established the Engineering Foundation, which was managed by its own board, the Foundation Board, nominated by the four founder societies. Its members acted as trustees of Mr. Swasey’s gift and of any other gift that might be given to the Engineering Foundation to serve a purpose similar to that of Mr. Swasey’s gift. This Foundation became an instrumentality of the United Engineering Society for the stimulation, direction, and support of scientific research. It became, furthermore, the liaison agency between the engineers on the one hand and the technologists and scientists on the other hand, in activities concerned with research in all branches of mathematical, physical, and biological sciences. In other words, one of the great captains of American industry, Andrew Carnegie, was instrumental in bringing the great national engineering societies together into the United Engineering Society, and another great captain of American industry, Ambrose Swasey, invented and by his generosity constructed an instrumentality, the Engineering Foundation, which he put into the hands of the United Engineering Society for the purpose of enabling it to do the work which its charter demands, “advancing the engineering arts and sciences in all their branches.” I never think of these two generous acts on the part of Mr. Carnegie and of Mr. Swasey, without being reminded that these two great organizers of American industry were guided by the same motives of idealism which had guided the great men of the revolutionary times when they organized the United States. Read the charters of the Carnegie Institution, of the Engineering Society, and of the Engineering Foundation, and you will find that no trace of materialism can be found in the proposed scientific activities of these institutions founded by two men who made material things but never lost touch with the spiritual world which gave direction and discipline to all their acts.
The Engineering Foundation became an operating instrumentality in April, 1915, and in a year from that time it was called upon to engage in a scientific enterprise which, in my opinion, has proved to be of the very greatest national importance. In April, 1916, it appeared that we were to become involved in the World War on account of the sinking of the Sussex by German submarines. The charter of the National Academy of Sciences, passed by Congress and approved by President Lincoln in 1863, provides that “the Academy shall, whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science and art.” The early records indicate that during its very earliest days the National Academy of Sciences, under the leadership of Joseph Henry, and while the Civil War was still going on, dealt actively with scientific research relating to military and naval problems. It was, therefore, perfectly natural that, in view of the threatening crisis, the National Academy of Sciences should, in April, 1916, offer its services to the President of the United States, who accepted them and requested the Academy to organize the scientific and technical resources of the country in the broadest and most effective manner. This is how the National Research Council was born. It is the offspring of the National Academy of Sciences. The mother was born during the Civil War, and the offspring was born during the World War. Blessed be the country which even in times of war creates institutions the highest aim of which is to cultivate the arts of peace!
The members of the National Academy of Sciences are elected on account of distinguished services to science, and not on account of their cleverness as administrators or organizers. The National Research Council was to be organized for the purpose of “stimulating research in mathematical, physical, and biological sciences, and in the application of these sciences to engineering, agriculture, medicine, and other useful arts, with the object of increasing knowledge, of strengthening the national defense, and of contributing in other ways to the public welfare.” The words just quoted are taken from President Wilson’s executive order, and describe a splendid conception. But from conception to reduction to practice is a long pull, requiring efforts along most practical lines of endeavor in which scientific men as a rule do not excel. But it was very fortunate for the National Academy of Sciences and for the people of the United States that among the scientists of the Academy there was one man who had always displayed just as remarkable a genius for organization as he had for original scientific research; I mean Professor George Ellery Hale, director of the Mount Wilson Observatory. Several other members of the Academy, including myself, did our best to aid him in the task of reducing to practice many of his ideas relating to the National Research Council. There was, fortunately, one thing which greatly assisted our earliest and most difficult efforts in behalf of this national movement; it was the existence of the Engineering Foundation.
My former pupil, Gano Dunn, was in 1916 the chairman of the Engineering Foundation, and I was one of the two vice-chairmen. It did not cost me much effort to persuade Dunn that one of the biggest tasks which the Engineering Foundation could take up was to grubstake the National Research Council during its formative period. The Board of the Foundation accepted enthusiastically this suggestion, recommended by Mr. Dunn and myself, and from September 1916 to September 1917 the administrative organization as well as the total income of the Foundation was devoted to the organizing work of the National Research Council. I am very proud that during a part of that period I was the chairman of the Engineering Foundation, succeeding Mr. Dunn, and had splendid opportunities to aid Professor Hale and his committees in the historic work of organizing the National Research Council. Mr. Swasey was very happy in this national work of the Foundation, and he added to its income for that year a sum of five thousand dollars as additional aid for its great undertaking. At the expiration of that year, the National Research Council did not need any further financial assistance from the Engineering Foundation, but the co-operation started in 1916 between the two national bodies continued and produced splendid results; so much so that in 1918, during my term of office as chairman of the Foundation, Mr. Swasey added one hundred thousand dollars to his original gift, and in 1920 two hundred thousand dollars more, and the Engineering Foundation became the guiding and controlling factor in the activities of the engineering division of the National Research Council. Mr. Swasey always hoped that others would follow his example and by their generous contribution increase the income of the Engineering Foundation to what it should be. This institution, as the directing instrument of the engineering division of the National Research Council, could, with an adequate annual income, say one hundred thousand dollars or more, do a world of good in the research of our great national engineering problems. I trust that Mr. Swasey’s hopes will not meet with disappointment, because his hopes are based upon his accurate estimate of what the engineering profession needs. An estimate supported by the judgment and vision of a Swasey, and by his generous financial efforts, should receive the most respectful attention and warmest sympathy of our public-spirited men.
It goes without saying that during the World War the National Research Council was organized mainly with a view to aiding the government in the pursuit of the war, and for that purpose it was closely associated with the government’s scientific bureaus, and with the technical department of the Army and Navy. This arrangement is referred to, and receives the highest official sanction, in the executive order issued by President Wilson, which I quote now in full:
EXECUTIVE ORDER ISSUED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
The National Research Council was organized in 1916 at the request of the President by the National Academy of Sciences, under its Congressional charter, as a measure of national preparedness. The work accomplished by the Council in organizing research and in securing co-operation of military and civilian agencies in the solution of military problems demonstrates its capacity for larger service. The National Academy of Sciences is therefore requested to perpetuate the National Research Council, the duties of which shall be as follows:
1. In general, to stimulate research in the mathematical, physical, and biological sciences, and in the application of these sciences to engineering, agriculture, medicine, and other useful arts, with the object of increasing knowledge, of strengthening the national defense, and of contributing in other ways to the public welfare.
2. To survey the larger possibilities of science, to formulate comprehensive projects of research, and to develop effective means of utilizing the scientific and technical resources of the country for dealing with these projects.
3. To promote co-operation in research, at home and abroad, in order to secure concentration of effort, minimize duplication, and stimulate progress; but in all co-operative undertakings to give encouragement to individual initiative, as fundamentally important to the advancement of science.
4. To serve as a means of bringing American and foreign investigators into active co-operation with the scientific and technical services of the War and Navy Departments and with those of the civil branches of the Government.
5. To direct the attention of scientific and technical investigators to the present importance of military and industrial problems in connection with the war, and to aid in the solution of these problems by organizing specific researches.
6. To gather and collate scientific and technical information at home and abroad, in co-operation with governmental and other agencies and to render such information available to duly accredited persons.
Effective prosecution of the Council’s work requires the cordial collaboration of the scientific and technical branches of the Government, both military and civil. To this end representatives of the Government, upon the nomination of the National Academy of Sciences, will be designated by the President as members of the Council, as heretofore, and the heads of the departments immediately concerned will continue to co-operate in every way that may be required.
(Signed) Woodrow Wilson.
The White House, May 11, 1918.
During the World War the National Research Council was only partly supported by the government, although it did exclusively government work. After the war, however, the activities of the National Research Council were reorganized without departing from the spirit of the President’s executive order, and its support was derived from private sources only. Its organization can be described broadly as follows: