[ Continuing the biographical sketch by Dr. Hickman. ]

After the depression of 1929, the American Piano Company went into the
hands of receivers.  Beginning in January 1930 I joined the acoustical
department of the Bell Telephone Laboratories.  There I developed mag-
netic recording on metal tape.  I worked on many devices for measuring
and showing speech patterns.  In the mid-thirties I was transferred to
the machine switching group that was working on new ways of doing
machine switching in telephone company central offices.

About mid-year of 1940, I was loaned on a one-day-per-week basis to
the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC).  I was made chairman
of Section H (H for Hickman) of Division A.  I got into this work due
to a visit I made to Dr. Frank B. Jewett, President of Bell Telephone
Laboratories.  I had begun to worry about the conditions in Europe and
wrote a letter to Dr. Goddard to see if the armed forces were doing
anything about developing rockets for use in warfare.

He wrote me a long letter saying that he and Harry Guggenheim had spent
several days in Washington trying to arouse some interest in such work,
but that no interest was shown.  I told Dr. Goddard that I might be
able to get some interest through Dr. Jewett, who was connected with
the new defense committees that were being set up in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Goddard wrote to me saying: "Go ahead and God bless you", but to
first check with Harry Guggenheim.  I did check with Dr.  Guggenheim and
he gave me the green light.

I then went to see Dr. Jewett and left with him some reports that I had
written in connection with our tests at Aberdeen in 1919.  Dr. Jewett
was much impressed and classified the documents and had duplicates made
and sent them to Dr. Tolman, who was chairman of Division A of The
National Defense Research Committee.  Dr. Tolman then got in touch with
me and asked me to come to his office in Washington to discuss some of
the rocket programs that I had suggested.  This I did and met Dr. V.
Bush, who was head of The Office of Scientific Research and
Development.

It so happened that my friend and coworker at Clark University in the
Industrial Research Laboratory, Dr. L. T. E. Thompson, had taken a
position with the Navy and was in charge of Research and Development at
Dahlgren, Va.  They were looking for some means of accelerating armor
piercing bombs so that they could be dropped from lower altitudes.
They had shown interest in the use of rockets for such purposes and
they wanted me to take charge of developing such a rocket for attach-
ment to their armor piercing bomb.  It was then arranged that I should
spend one day each week on this project.  Bell Laboratories paid my
salary and the National Defense Research Committee paid my expenses.

As time passed I spent more and more time on defense problems: rockets,
recoilless guns, flame throwers, etc.  By the time the war ended I was
spending one day per week at the Bell Telephone Laboratories and the
rest of the time with the National Defense Research Committee.  At
first I had charge of all rocket developments in the United States but
later the West Coast section was taken over by Dr. Charles Lauritsen of
Cal. Tech.

In the fall of 1940 a Rocket Research Laboratory was set up under my
direction in the old Naval Proving Station at Indian Head, Maryland.
A contract was made with George Washington University to provide
personnel and services for the laboratory.  Later this laboratory was
moved to Cumberland, Md.

During the war period, I served as consultant to the Army in their
research on rockets at Aberdeen, Md.  I did special technical work for
General Henry on evaluation of the German long range rockets.

In the summers of 1944 I was given a commission as colonel to go with
the ALSOS Mission in France and England, etc.  My job was to determine
how the J. B. 2 bombs were launched.  I wrote a report on this subject
and it was flown by special plant to Dayton, Ohio.

In addition to administrative work connected with U. S. Rocket
Development, I did lots of design and inventive work on rockets,
recoilless guns, flame throws, bazooka rockets, airplane rockets.
I developed systems for measuring pressure in rockets and their thrust.
I also developed an 8 mm, 6,000 frame per second moving camera for pho-
tographing rockets in flight.  This was followed by the development
of a Ribbon Frame Camera that took the place of the movie camera, the
camera being quite portable.  It was extensively used by most of the
rocket research laboratories.

Some weeks I spent as much as 90 hours on my work and traveled all over
the country.