NAVAL OFFICERS IN RESEARCH HERE

Eleven Lieutenants of the United States Navy are stationed at the Engineering School for one year of advanced study in communication engineering, one of the most important subjects in modern naval operations, according to Professor G. W. Pierce '01, director of Cruft Memorial Laboratory, with whom the naval officers are studying. The Navy Department sends selected graduates of Annapolis to the best civil institutions for concentration in certain fields of advanced study after their first six year cruise, and one year of post-graduate work in the Naval Academy.

Professor Pierce is one of the leading authorities in this country in the field of communication engineering: and during the war carried on experiments in supersonics at the Bellevue Laboratory, Washington, D. C., to work out a means of detecting the approach of submarines. The naval officers who are studying at Harvard this year will work with the hydrophone, an instrument used for depth finding, signalling under water, the detection of objects on the ocean floor, and the transmission of speech through the sea. The radio will be the special field of some of lie men, as the primary, and often the only means of communication at sea.

"The hydrophone is one of the most important instruments in modern navigation," Lieutenant G. B. Myers, one of the naval officers stationed at the Engineering School told a CRIMSON reporter. "Electric beacons are being used now where formerly light houses and bells were the only guides at dangerous points. Fog and rough weather make the older methods unreliable or utterly useless, while the electric vibrations transmitted through the sea, and registered by the hydrophone, are not so seriously affected by conditions of the weather. The depth of water under a ship at any time can be instantly determined by electric means, while undersea signalling and the transmission of the voice through water are also being developed."

Lieutenant Myers also pointed out the importance of radio in naval operations, when either distance or the roar of big guns makes all other forms of signalling or communication inadequate, if not impossible. The radio officer of a fleet or line vessel therefore has the success of a naval operation depending to a large degree upon his department.

Besides Lieutenant Myers, Lieutenants J. B. Noble, M. B. Sterling, M. E. Curts, W. K. Sherman, A. M. Granum, Christopher Noble, F. D. Kime, W. S. Dufton, H. A. Tellman, and H. N. Coulter are studying in the Cruft Laboratory.