A History of the Waterways Experiment Station, 1929-1979

Abstract

Abstract : When Congress authorized the establishment of a hydraulics laboratory to help combat floods in the Mississippi River Valley in 1929, some envisioned the facility as one to be constructed on a barge and floated up and down the vast waterway. Since its beginning half a century ago, the work of the U. S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station (WES) has been expanded into many fields other than hydraulics. Did you see the television pictures of the first lunar vehicle traversing the moon's surface?-it was rolling on tires tested at WES. Remember the Allied invasion of Europe at Normandy in World War II , and the success of the Berlin Airlift during the Cold War?-much of the know-how for the success of those two events resulted from tests at WES. Take a trip across the United States, and you will travel highways constructed better and more economically because of WES technology. And if you visit a public reservoir for a weekend of relaxation and fun, chances are that its dam and spillway were first built in scale-model size and tested at WES. History is the story of man and his accomplishments, and many achievements, especially in an establishment such as WES, are often highly technical. In telling the story of WES, however, the nontechnical aspects have been accented as much as possible, for sc scientific and technical data in depth have been provided in the reports published by WES.