or otherwise, arose, I went to look things over, and if I had any suggestions to make, I was assigned to that job. I spent several weeks at Brunswick, Georgia, where concrete ships were under construction and where my experiments with the cement gun served me in good stead. The fact that the concrete ships were not successful was not the fault of the concrete gun. It did its part.
After devoting a good deal of thought to searchlights and searchlight mirrors, I helped in lightening the apparatus materially and developed a device for searchlight control. This control, which involves the same rotary principle as my motion-picture camera, enables the operator standing at the end of an arm to direct the rays of the light toward any object in the sky and to keep it in view by following up its movements with the light. It is one of several devices developed at that time which have since been patented by the Government in my name.
Roosevelt once asked me why I declined to wear the major's uniform offered to me. "Well, Colonel Roosevelt," I replied unhesitatingly, for I had my good reason for so doing, "if I were wearing a uniform, I could not go to my colonel and tell him he was a damn fool."
Roosevelt laughed heartily.
"You are quite right," he replied. "Stick to it!"
As a civilian I went about wherever work was going on, talked freely with the workmen, heard them discuss their mechanical difficulties, and got from them their ideas for improvements. As a civilian I was
