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Lloyd N. Scott's Naval Consulting Board of the United States

This official history of the Naval Consulting Board was published by the Government Printing Office in 1920. It is available online through the Hathi Trust and through Google Books.

The following sections have been published in the digital edition of the Thomas A. Edison Papers: (1) front matter, including title page, table of contents, preface by Josephus Daniels, and photographs of Daniels and the Naval Consulting Board.

(2) Chapter 11, "Inventive Accomplishments of Members," which discusses Edison's wartime research projects and includes extracts from several of his letters to Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, as well as his letter of November 21, 1917, to Sir Eric Geddes, head of the British Admiralty.

(3) Appendix: Naval Laboratory, which contains the majority report signed by Frank J. Sprague and Lawrence Addicks recommending Annapolis as the site of the proposed laboratory.

The minority report signed by Edison recommending Sandy Hook, New Jersey.

Another appendix (not selected) contains thirty oversize maps of shipping routes along the coasts of Europe and North America, prepared by Edison and included in his letter to Geddes.

The maps are folded into the book and were only partially scanned by Google. For an Adobe Acrobat version of the selected pages, click here. For the Google images via the Hathi Trust, click here.

The following is a list prepared by Edison's personal assistant William H. Meadowcroft, of 57 wartime research experiments, along with another list of 48 experiments. This is a similar list to the one contained in Chapter 11 of Scott's book.

Below are some examples of Edison's research experiments for the Naval Consultancy Board, mentioned in Scott's book. The links on the page numbers lead to the appropriate page in the Hathi Trust version of Scott's book. Two projects—Sailing Lights for Convoys (pp.175-176) and Steamship Decoys (p.180)—do not have related documents in the Hummel Collection. The links for those projects lead only to the Scott book.

• Detecting Submarine by Sound from Moving Vessel pp.161-164
• Quick Turning of Ships Sea Anchor pp.164-165
• Strategic Plans for Saving Cargo Boats from Submarines pp.165-170
• Collision Matsp.170
• Taking Merchant Ships out of Mined Harbors pp.170-171

Edison, Submarines, and the Phonograph

Edison was responsible for many innovations for the war effort, including the home front. This is a recording from an Edison Diamond Disc of a dramatized submarine attack on a US cargo ship.¹

References

Footnotes

1. Edison Diamond Disc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP1blMpzrkE ↩