Presidents of the 1930s
OSA Historical Archives
John N. Howard
Meet the presidents who led OSA through an uncertain decade.
Loyd Ancil Jones
1930-1931
Loyd Ancil Jones received a B.S. in
electrical engineering from the University of Nebraska in 1908 and an M.A.
in physics in 1910. His first job was with
the National Bureau of Standards (NBS),
where he became assistant to Perley Nutting. Later, when C.E.K. Mees, director
of the research laboratory at Eastman
Kodak, recruited Nutting to become
assistant director and head of the physics
department at Kodak, Nutting brought
Jones with him to Rochester.
Five years later, Nutting left Kodak
to become research director at Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, and Jones remained
on as chief of optics. He was a charter
member of OSA and a distinguished specialist in photography and related fields
such as photographic sensitometry and
colorimetry at the Kodak Research Laboratories from 1916 onward. He became
an Ives Medalist in 1943. He published
mainly in journals of photography, and
his work appeared only twice in JOSA.
Jones served as OSA president in 1930,
when five sister societies in physics cooperated to bring into existence the American Institute of Physics, an organization
intended to provide joint services to the
five member societies, principally in the
area of publications.
In 1933, Jones succeeded Leonard
Troland and Irwin Priest (who both died
in 1932) as chair of the OSA Committee on Colorimetry, which was responsible for the publication in 1953 of the
authoritative book ;e Science of Color.
Jones retired from Kodak in 1954. Unfortunately, his retirement was very brief;
Jones served as OSA
president in 1930, when
five sister societies in
physics cooperated to
bring into existence
the American Institute
of Physics.
he died suddenly just two weeks later.
(C.E.K. Mees wrote an obituary of Jones
in 1954 in Image, the journal of photography of the George Eastman House.)
Eugene C. Crittenden
1932-1933
Eugene Crittenden joined NBS in 1909,
and he remained there as a physical
standards expert until his retirement 41
years later. He became associate director
and chief of the divisions in which the
Bureau’s optical work was conducted. He
specialized in photometry and illumination. As early as 1914, he was working
on national standards for candlepower.
He published chiefly in the Journal of the
American Illuminating Engineering Society, although he had six papers published
in JOSA.
In the mid-1950s, he became vice
president of the International Commission of Weights and Measures (a body
of 18 national members). In 1951, he
wrote an interesting JOSA article on the
occasion of the 50th anniversary of NBS.
In it, he highlighted the optical contributions of the earliest NBS researchers in
optics and their involvement with OSA.
He included group photos of early OSA
meetings held at NBS in 1922 and the
Michelson meetings in 1928 and 1934.
Wilbur Bramley Rayton
1933-1934
Wilbur Bramley Rayton was another
charter member. He spent his entire
career as a member of the Bausch &
Lomb sta;. He had an article in the
very first volume of JOSA in 1917. In
1926, he served on a committee (along
with T.R. Wilkins of the University of
Rochester and Loyd A. Jones of Eastman
Kodak) that outlined possible courses to
