The organization of these technical societies did not wait for the arrival of the American university. But, nevertheless, when the American university arrived, and with it the research laboratories in the fundamental sciences, it improved the quality of the American engineer, and of the American engineering societies, just as it improved the scientific standards of the American industrial organizations. The National Academy of Sciences deserves here a special consideration. It is an association of workers in _abstract science_, principally, but, contrary to what I have just said, it is, like the American Philosophical Society, founded by Franklin, older than any of our national engineering societies. Its early birth was due to the conditions created by the Civil War. Joseph Henry, I imagine, suggested to President Lincoln that a mobilization of the scientific resources of the North would improve greatly its military strength, and thus the National Academy of Sciences was chartered by Congress during the Civil War, in 1863, and was approved by President Lincoln. It was a creation of the Civil War, and is in many respects an institution which forms a part of the Federal Government. I shall describe now how the National Academy of Sciences, itself a creation of the Federal Government during the Civil War, gave birth during the World War to another national scientific institution which is the climax of the great scientific movement started fifty years ago. I have watched this movement almost from its very beginning up to the present time; yes, I have been a part of it during its most active period, and I believe that I understand its full meaning. The four leading engineering societies, mentioned above, were in quite a flourishing condition at the beginning of this century; flourishing not only with regard to the number, but also with regard to the quality of their membership, and their progress was speeding on with remarkable rapidity. For instance, the papers read before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1900, and the discussions which followed them, were immeasurably superior to those read in 1890, when I first became a member of this Institute, because the quality of its membership was also immeasurably superior. The great American industries paid much more respectful attention to these engineering societies than when I first came to Columbia College in 1889. The greatest among the American captains of industry of those days, the late Andrew Carnegie, held them in so high an esteem that he presented a magnificent gift to them which led to the formation of the United Engineering Society. This happened in 1904, and marks one of the great events in the history of American technical science.