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[[image - drawing of elevation of Göttingen University Laboratory]]
[[image - drawing of floor plan of Göttingen University Laboratory]]
[[caption]] Diagram of the Göttingen University Laboratory. Wind tunnel is at left [[/caption]]

[[image - schematic drawing of Prandtl wind tunnel suspension system]]
[[caption]] Drawing of the Prandtl suspension for the measurement of side force [[/caption]] 

of heavier-than-air machines.  Today it is far behind. When the European war broke out, France had about 1,400 airplanes, Germany 1,000, Russia 800, Great Britain 400, the United States 23 ... A National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics cannot fail to be of inestimable service in the development of the art of aviation in America.  Such a committee, to be effective, should be permanent and attract to its membership the most highly trained men in the art of aviation and such technical services as are connected with it.  Through the agency subcommittees the main advisory committee should avail itself of the advice and suggestions of a large number of technical and practical men...  The aeronautical committee should advise in relation to the work of the Government in aeronautics and the coordination of the activities of governmental and private laboratories, in which questions concerned with the study of the problems of aeronautics can be experimentally investigated."

The Navy heartily endorsed the idea in a letter signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt as Acting Secretary, but by the time a Joint Resolution authorizing creation of such a committee had been prepared, the Congress was pressing toward the closing of its session in early March.  This shortness of time - rather than the reported opposition by President Wilson to establishment of such an aeronautical research agency at a time when the United States was seeking so diligently to maintain strict neutrality in the war - doubtless explains why Rep. Earnest W. Roberts (himself a Smithsonian Regent and also a member of the House committee on Naval Affairs) attached the resolution as a rider to the Naval Appropriations Act.

So it was that, on March 3, 1915, organization of America's aeronautical research establishment, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, was approved.  The part played by the NACA in the successful effort by the United States over years ahead to regain its position of aeronautical leadership belongs in a later chapter.

In a dozen short years, following the first flights of Wilbur and Orville Wright, a very great change in aviation took place.  The designer learned to look to the mathematician and the physicist for vital assistance in solving problems that seemed to multiply with progress. This learning process was slow; it is ironic that in the United States, in those early days, it was slowest of all countries.
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