(Music)
(Propeller starts and runs)
Walter Vincente: The N-A-C-A was formed by
an act of Congress in mid-1915.
The acronym stood for National Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics.
Its original purpose was to advise
the U.S. government on matters pertaining to
the development of aeronautics.
The N-A-C-A went on to do a number
of notable things.
The most prominent were the development of
the world's first pressurized wind tunnel
at Langley Field in the mid-1920s.
They went then, in the 1930s, on to develop
the famous N-A-C-A cowling and also, they went on
to conceive of the idea and work out the details
of the laminar flow airfoil.
Those all became highly used in the aircraft industry.
During the Depression, the Great Depression,
money was hard to come by.
The load on the Langley laboratory
was becoming considerable.
Glenn Bugos: The N-A-C-A Laboratory at
Langley Field in Virginia was overbuilt.
There was no room on the tarmac
for flight research aircraft.
There was no room for wind tunnels.
Most importantly, there was no electricity
available to drive any new wind tunnels
that could be constructed there.
(Music)
Charles Lindbergh: We are on the verge of war,
for which we are still unprepared.
The American Army has only a few hundred
thoroughly modern bombers and fighters.
Less, in fact, than Germany is able to produce
in a single month.
Walter Vincente: Trips were made to Germany
by George Lewis, the director of N-A-C-A
and Charles Lindbergh to see
what was going on in Germany.
What they did see really opened their eyes. 
Germany was far ahead of the United States
in aeronautical research.
It seems to have been a growing consensus,
among the military in particular, also the N-A-C-A,
and some growing feeling in the Congress
that something needed to be done.
Russ Robinson: A) Our only laboratory
is on the East Coast.
B) The aircraft industry is moving to the West Coast.
We ought to establish a second laboratory.
A site selection committee was formed under Colonel Lindbergh.
Walter Vincente: The N-A-C-A itself finally came up
with a proposal to put a laboratory
near Sunnyvale, California.
The final act of Congress to fund the new laboratory
here at Sunnyvale was in June of 1939.
Glenn Bugos:  Why Moffett Field?
It was located on the West Coast,
close to the West Coast aircraft manufacturers
in Los Angeles and Seattle.
But probably, most importantly, there was a
craft tradition in the Bay Area.
This came in very handy when Ames had to build
huge wind tunnel hulls or very tiny electrodes
that served for very sensitive instrumentation.
Joseph Sweetman Ames was a professor of physics
and later, president of the Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore.
He was also a founding member of the N-A-C-A in 1915
and served as the chairman of its main committee
from 1927 until 1937.
And because of the integrity and the trust
that people in Congress and in the Executive Branch
of the government had placed in Joseph Sweetman Ames,
the laboratory here was established and in 1944,
it was named after him.
(Music fades out)
