Edison's Collaborators to be Chosen This Week

Many Noted Inventors Suggested as Members of the Naval Advisory Committee, Headed by 'Wizard.'

Washington, July 15. — With Thomas A. Edison's acceptance of the chairmanship, assuring the organization of the Advisory Committee on Naval Inventions projected by Secretary Daniels, interest now centers on the identity of its other members. Mr. Daniels declined to talk of any but the general aspects of his plan, yet the group from among which the councillors will be chosen took pretty definite form yesterday.

With the departure of Secretary Daniels to-day for West Orange, N. J., to confer with Thomas A. Edison in regard to the proposed navy bureau of invention and the civilian advisory board, naval officials looked forward to an announcement to follow immediately after the conference. The secretary will seek the views of Mr. Edison about some of the men to be invited to join the advisory board. Pending the conference, however, Mr. Daniels will not make known the names of other possible board members.

Chief among the names suggested wore those of Alexander Graham Hell, whose perfecuen of the telephone is only one of his scientific achievements: Sirion Lake, builder of submarines; Orville Wright, inventor of the first successful heavier-than-air flying machine; Hudson Maxim, inventor of explosives; Henry Ford, expert in gasoline engine construction; Nikola Tesla, electrical expert and inventor of turbines, and John Hays Hammond. jr., 38-year-old son of the mining engineer, who has conducted successful experiments in the control of torpedoes and boats by wireless.

To Complete Staff This Week.

The personnel of the Advisory committee will perhaps be made known before the end of this week. Mr. Daniels says the announcement will come within a very short time, and it is understood he had already decided upon the men he wants. Extending invitations to them is all that remains before the preliminary organization can be perfected.

Miller Reese Hutchinson, consulting engineer of the Edison Storage Battery company, and personal representative of Mr. Edison in naval affairs, yesterday laid before Secretary Daniels Mr. Edison's acceptance of the chairmanship of the projected advisory committee. Mr. Edison declared through Mr. Hutchinson that he regarded the invitation as "a call to duty," and when he has had an opportunity to reach a decision regarding scope and policy questions submitted to him by Secretary Daniels he will make his formal responses. This will probably be before the end of the week.

Mr. Edison thinks best when he is busy about his workrooms, and yesterday he ranged tirelessly through the laboratories at West Orange, N. J. going during the afternoon to one of the outlying plants that he does not visit regularly.

"I'm too busy to talk," he said to all requests for comment upon Mr. Daniels's plan.

Beyond the organization of the advisory committee, it became known yesterday, Secretary Daniels hopes for the amalgamation into one great plant of the scattered laboratories now under the control of the navy. He hopes too for substantial encouragement from Congress for civilian and service inventors, in order that his project may attain its full scope.

Tesla Suggests Experts.

Nikola Tesla said last night that he had received no invitation from Secretary Daniels to become a member of the advisory committee, and expressed his surprise that his name had been included among the possibilities.

"I have heard nothing directly, concerning the plan," he said. "Three or four months ago, however, I received a letter broaching such a plan and asking my opinion. This letter was not from any government official, but it was along this very line, and I replied that I would be glad to do what I could to further the project.

"I said that I had three men in mind who ought to be secured for any such work as this. The first of them is Charles P. Steinmetz of the General Electric company. He is a very brilliant expert, one of the very firest living. Of course, he is a German, but that ought not to make any difference.

Suggests Careful Study.

"Then there is Charles Felton Scott, professor of electrical engineering at the Sheffield Scientific school. Harris J. Ryan, who has been professor of electrical engineering at Leland Stanford since he left that chair in Cornell in 1906, is another man whose services should be secured. So far as I can see, these men are the finest experts that could be had to pass upon inventions and analyze them.

"I think there should be careful study as to whether or not the plan In general is a good one, and if the military men need the assistance of civillan experts, I really wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't time for the work that this plan would involve, and perhaps outsiders would be better. There is always the danger that too many cooks will spoil the soup, but I am sure there will be small danger of that in this matter.

"Of course I should be only too proud to have any part in it that might be asked of me."

Mr. Tesla, who was born a Hungarian, has been a resident of this country thirty-one years and has long been a naturalized citizen.