else, for that matter—that the principles I had worked out for taxidermy, for the cement gun, and for the camera might be applied to the mechanical devices of warfare.
But work began with an order from the Government for a lot of Akeley cameras. A call from the Signal Corps of the War Department asking me to bring them down took me to Washington shortly after war was declared, with the result that I accepted a contract whereby the entire output of the camera shop was turned over to the United States Government.
Soon after I became a Specialist on Mechanical Devices and Optical Equipment in the Division of Investigation, Research, and Development of the Engineer Corps. My chief was Major O. B. Zimmerman, who thirty years before had been my student in Milwaukee. He had wanted to become a taxidermist, but in those days taxidermy seemed a mighty poor game and I did my best to dissuade him from any such mad career. His wisdom in following my advice is proved by the fact that when the war broke out he was in Belgium as one of the leading engineers for the International Harvester Company. I had a desk in Major Zimmerman's office, but my actual work was done in the camera shop in New York, in the American Museum of Natural History, and in various laboratories. At least once each week I rode back and forth from Washington to New York. My duties were those of a consulting engineer, but they were much varied, for we had several things under way all the time. Wherever a problem, mechanical
