The First Federal Civil Aviation R&D Facility 

Theresa L. Kraus, FAA Historian 

Seventy-five years ago, on May 29, 1939, the Robert Hinkley, chairman of the Civil Aeronautics 

Authority, formally dedicated the CAA’s Indianapolis Experimental Station (later renamed the 

Technical Development and Evaluation Center and then Technical Development Center). In 

1938, the CAA had received funding to establish an aviation research center. The CAA acquired 

a site at Indianapolis, Indiana, through a long-term lease arrangement with the city. The facility, 

which the city of Indianapolis built in one year under contract to the CAA at a cost of $800,000, 

sat on a 1,000 acre tract of land adjacent to the Indianapolis Municipal Airport (later called Weir 

Cook Airport). The new facility had two 4,000-foot runways, allowing for landings in four 

directions. The hangar/shop area comprised a 150 feet by 120 feet building with a two-story 30 

by 120 feet section for office and laboratory space. 

Before construction of the Station, federal researchers at the CAA and its predecessor agencies 

had conducted civil aviation R&D at any number of airports willing to let them run specific 

flight tests and demonstrations of prototype navigation aids. The new station consolidated all 

R&D activities at one facility allowing for better coordination of research personnel at one 

location. With a single facility to consolidate activities, CAA accelerated its R&D program. 

The early work at Indianapolis focused primarily on developing and refining navigation aids, 

such as the instrument landing system (ILS), very-high-frequency radio ranges, and radio 

transmitters and receivers. The equipment installed at the facility included a CAA-developed 

prototype ILS, an ultra-high frequency radio range, and runway landing lights designed to 

provide better visual assistance to pilots during bad weather landings. CAA assigned two 

research aircraft to the facility: a Waco with tricycle landing gear used in the ultra-highfrequency radio research and a Stinson equipped with conventional landing gear for use in the 

instrument landing research. 

Researchers demonstrated the first 

reliable ILS, complete with localizer, 

glide path, and outer and inner marker 

beacons, in 1940. A visitor to the Station 

in February 1940, there to watch tests of 

the ILS, described the facility as a place 

“where research was done on a variety 

of things from testing runway lights to 

firing dead chickens from a cannon 

toward a built-up windshield at a couple 

hundred miles an hour to see if the 

windshield could withstand the crunch 

CAA’s research aircraft NC-11, a Boeing-247, in front of the Indianapolis 

Experimental Station 
of a bird hit in flight.” He continued, “The result was lots of blood and it was hard on the chicken 

carcass.” The CAA’s windshield experiments proved a perennial favorite for the press. 

In the immediate post-war period, the Experimental 

Station housed 14 engineers and 88 other workers. 

Most of their work focused on adapting military radio 

and radar advances for civil aviation needs. On May 

24, 1946, for example, the CAA demonstrated 

publicly the world’s first radar-equipped control 

tower for civilian flying. Raytheon had built the basic 

radar equipment for the Navy. Improvements to the 

military equipment included an improved search 

antenna and a feature that eliminated ground clutter 

by permitting only moving targets to appear on the 

screen. By means of radar screens, traffic controllers 

could see every aircraft for 30 miles around the airport, no matter how bad the weather. 

The CAA not only hoped to significantly improve U.S. civil aviation safety, but also wanted to 

transition U.S. technology to the world. From October 10-23, 1946, CAA hosted 140 

representatives from 28 nations at the Indianapolis Experimental Station. CAA officials hoped 

the three-week meeting would convince the Provisional International Civil Aviation 

Organization (PICAO, precursor to the International Civil Aviation Organization) to adopt the 

U.S.-developed navigation aids as the global standard. On November 23, after a three-week long 

meeting in Montreal, the PICAO Radio Technical Division recommended the CAA’s localizerglide path, or ILS, system and the CAA’s very high frequency omni-directional range with 

distance-measuring equipment as the world standards. 

In a 1951 article in its journal, the CAA boasted that the Technical Development and Evaluation 

Center had grown from a small office in the CAA’s headquarters in Washington, DC, to a 

facility at Indianapolis of recognized, world-wide importance. The Center’s work, according to 

the article, “[is] prominent in all technical discussions in the International Civil Aviation 

Organization in Montreal.” Some of the Center’s accomplishments included: 

 A sandwich type windshield, consisting of glass and plastic, strong enough to withstand 

collision with birds in flight 

 A simple stall warning device 

 Fire resistant coatings for airplane fabric 

 Flashing aircraft navigation lights 

 Safer exhaust manifolds and vacuum pump systems 

 Fire-proof oil tanks 

 A flammability scale for use by industry in fire studies 

 Instrument landing system 

 Distance measuring equipment 

Early radar display being tested at the Washington air 

route traffic control center in 1948 
 Slope line approach lights 

 A means to measure airport pavement strength 

 Cross-wind landing gear 

By the mid-1950s, the engineers in Indianapolis began 

testing computer technology to aid with air traffic control. 

In October 1956, the CAA leased an IBM model 650 

computer for installation in the Indianapolis ARTCC. In 

conjunction with other computer development work being 

carried out by the Technical Development Center, 

researchers assessed the value of the IBM computer for 

aiding in air traffic control duties. 

Despite its ongoing achievements, because of limited 

funding and resources the facility’s development projects 

often took longer than desired. In July 1956, Milton Arnold, a representative from the Air Traffic 

Association (ATA) surveyed the Center’s diverse efforts and reported the Center was “geared by 

funds and facilities to the requirement of aviation in 1938, at best. There are some excellent . . . 

personnel in that division of CAA, but the overall concept of the . . . development program . . . is 

approximately 10 to 15 years behind in money, facilities, and staffing.” 

The Center’s “disreputable-looking buildings,” as one reporter described the facility in 1958, 

seemed to epitomize what many considered a decaying air traffic control system, unable to keep 

up with increases in air traffic, deploy quickly new air traffic control equipment, and, in general, 

prepare for the coming jet age. In 1956, a major accident spurred calls for changes to federal 

aviation regulations and for a stronger civil aviation research and development effort. On June 

30, a Trans World Airlines Super Constellation and a United Air Lines DC-7 collided over the 

Grand Canyon, Arizona, killing all 128 occupants of the two airplanes. The collision occurred 

while the aircraft were flying under visual flight rules in uncongested airspace. The accident 

dramatized the fact that, even though U.S. air traffic had more than doubled since the end of 

World War II, little had been done to mitigate the risk of midair collisions. In the wake of 

mounting public pressure, Congress opened hearings to probe the general problems of airspace 

and air traffic control management. 

In August 1957, President Eisenhower signed the Airways Modernization Act, which established 

the Airways Modernization Board and charged it with the development and modernization of the 

national system of navigation and air traffic control facilities. The board would serve as an 

interim organization until a permanent agency could be established to oversee civil aviation. 

With a clearly defined mandate and sufficient funding to undertake an expanded aviation 

research and development program, the Board decided to establish a new technical center. It 

selected a site near Atlantic City, New Jersey, from among more than 1,800 proposed sites to 

establish the National Aviation Facilities Experimental Center (NAFEC). Several factors 

contributed to the selection. The Navy was vacating its Pomona Naval Air Station and the 

opportunity for immediate occupancy and the use of existing facilities would save millions of 

dollars and months of time. Atlantic City also afforded test engineers a wide range of flying 

conditions and the proximity to both New York's high-density area and the open space over the 

IBM 650 
Atlantic Ocean permitted testing both in a complex operational environment and in an open 

airspace environment 

 

When the new Federal Aviation Agency superseded the CAA and took over the duties of the 

Airways Modernization Board in December 1958, NAFEC became the technical arm of the new 

organization’s Bureau of Research and Development. In 1959 the FAA closed the Indianapolis 

center and moved its development activities to NAFEC.