Historical Planet

Wednesday 12 February 2020

Samuel Eliot Morison -- American Scholar and Historian

Like the Greek historian Thucydides and the American historian Francis Parkman, Samuel Eliot Morison writes his books as much as possible from firsthand experiences. Indirect contact with the events that he recorded in his monumental History of United States Naval Operations in World War II.

Early Life

He was born on July 9. 1887 to John Holmes and Emily Marshall (Eliot) Morison in Boston, Massachusetts at 44 Brimmer Street. That was in a house that his grandfather, Samuel Eliot, a historian and educator, had built. His other grandfather, Nathaniel H. Morison, originally from Peterborough, New Hampshire, had been the first provost of the Peabody Institute in Baltin.

As Morison has related in his autobiographical notes for 20th Century Authors (H.W. Wilson Company, First Supplement, 1955), he was reared in "an atmosphere where scholarship, religion and social graces were happily blended." He attended Noble's School in Boston and St. Paul's in Concord, New Hampshire in preparation for Harvard University, which he entered in 1904.

Charles Homer Haskins and Edward Channing were among the distinguished scholars and professors at Harvard who aroused Morison's interest in history. Receiving his B.A. degree cum laude in June 1908, he went at once to France for a year's study, at the University of Grenoble during the summer and at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques in Paris during the winter.

Throughout his career, Morison has returned to Harvard repeatedly. In 1909 he took his M.A. degree there, and he remained at the university for the next three years (while assisting as a history instructor at Radcliffe College) to work for his Ph.D. degree, which was conferred in 1913.

Scholar and Historian

He gathered his material under the actual stress of battle as a commissioned officer in the Navy. Morison's meticulous scholarship has not interfered with his desire to avoid pedantry and to reach many contemporary readers. He is widely known for his biographies of Christopher Columbus (1942) and John Paul Jones (1959), both of which won Pulitzer Prizes.

Several of his other books have established him as an authority on early American history and on the history of Harvard University, where he taught for almost forty years. New England has been the earliest, the most profound, and the most prolonged of the several major influences on Samuel Eliot Morison's life and writings.

He had followed the suggestion of Professor Albert Bushnell Hart in choosing one of his own ancestors as the subject of his dissertation: his first book, The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, Federalist, 1765-1848, was published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1913. After another trip to Europe, in 1913, which he spent partly in the on-the-scene study of the Balkan Wars, Morison taught history briefly at the University of California.

He joined the Harvard faculty in 1915 as an instructor, but three years later enlisted as a private in the Army. Instead of returning to the classroom at the end of World War I, he served as an attaché to the Russian division of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace and was also a delegate on the Baltic Commission of the Paris Peace Conference.

I unsympathetic towards the Treaty of Versailles, he resigned in July 1919 and went back to Harvard in the fall. The courses that Morison taught at Harvard included one on the history of Massachusetts. His enthusiasm for the subject led to The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 (Houghton, 1921).

Which he ranks among his most successful books. It is a result of both scholarly research and the personal observations that he made while enjoying his hobby of sailing up and down the coast of New England. In its fusion of the authentic and the interesting. It is an early fulfillment and illustration of the aims that he set forth in his pamphlet History as a Literary Art, published in 1946 and reprinted in his collection of essays By Land and By Sea (Knopf, 1953).

In 1922 Oxford University invited Morison to become the first incumbent of its new chair of American history. During the next three years, while teaching at Oxford as Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History, he worked on his Oxford History of the United States, 1792-1917, a textbook that met the needs of British readers of American history.

Later, in collaboration with Henry Steele Commager, he enlarged his book into The Growth of the American Republic (Oxford, 1930; fourth revised edition! 1950). Home again at Harvard, where he accepted a professorship in history in 1925, Morison turned to more local subjects. He occupied himself in Builders of the Bay Colony (Houghton, 1930) with early New England and the culture that the Puritans had brought to America.

In 1926 Harvard had appointed him the official historian for its 300th anniversary. By the time the tercentenary was celebrated in 1936, the Harvard University Press had published a book that he had edited called The Development of Harvard University since the Inauguration of President Eliot, 1869-1929 (1930); most of Morison's multivolume Tercentennial History of Harvard College and University, 1636-1936.

Moreover, his more popular survey Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636-1936. The Tercentennial History brought him both the Jusserand Medal and Columbia University's Loubat Prize. Professor Morison deplores the lack of knowledge of foreign languages that he finds in many young historical researchers. He told Earl W. Foell of the Christian Science Monitor on September 29, 1960.

That when he encouraged his students to work on the discovery of America in celebration of the 450th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America, they shied away from the subject because of language difficulties: "Nobody was left but poor me to do anything on Columbus."

Following the example of Francis Parkman, who had prepared for his Pioneers of France in the New World (1865) by retracing the routes of the French explorers and living among the Indians, Morison tried to approximate the experiences of Columbus on his voyages to America.

Between 1937 and 1940 he made four trips in sailing vessels in the waters. That Columbus had explored, crossing and re-crossing the Atlantic in 1939-40 as commodore of the Harvard Columbus Expedition. Several of Morison's major books grew out of these adventurous investigations.

The Second Voyage of Christopher Columbus from Cadiz to Hispaniola and the Discovery of the Lesser Antilles (Oxford, 1939); Portuguese Voyages to America in the Fifteenth Century (Harvard. 1940); and Admiral of the Ocean Sea; A Life of Christopher Columbus (Little, 1942).

His work on Columbus, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 1943. was hailed as a monument of scholarship. The comments of Lincoln Colcord in the New York Herald Tribune Books (March 1, 1942) reflected the opinion of many reviewers: ''Combining extreme erudition and the art of good writing in almost equal quantities.

The narrative flows like a superb novel, while all the facts and observations are buttressed and re-buttressed with four centuries of references until there is hardly anything left to say." Admiral of the Ocean Sea proved to be an excellent recommendation for Morison when he set out in early 1942 to interest President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his proposal to prepare "a full, accurate and early record" of the part played by the United States Navy in World War II.

Morison has said that the welcome that sailors everywhere gave him as the biographer of Columbus was an even greater advantage to him than his commission as a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve, which he received in May 1942. Although he held the title of the historian of naval operations and was given a staff of officers and access to naval documents, he was not an official historian for the Navy.

Beginning in July 1942 with a convoy trip across the Atlantic, during the next three years, Morison covered almost all the battle areas and important naval operations of the war. He was an eyewitness to the North Africa landings in the fall of 1942, participated in the Central Solomon’s campaign in the summer of 1943 and later in the Gilbert Islands assault, visited the beachheads at Salerno and other areas of the European theater.

However, in 1945 saw the battle for Okinawa from the bridge of the flagship Tennessee. He served on some dozen ships during the war, earning seven Battle Stars and the Legion of Merit with combat clasp. Much of Morison's naval history was based on the notes of facts and impressions that he jotted down with a pencil on yellow paper during interviews and battles.

He filed these away, with official reports and other documents, to await the end of the war. He did not begin to publish his History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (Little) until he could examine enemy records. Working for the most part at an office in Harvard's Widener Library, he produced about one volume every year between 1947.

Later Years

When the Battle of the Atlantic: 1939-43 appeared, and 1960, when Victory in the Pacific, 1945 closed the fourteen-volume series. (Victory in the Pacific is the last of the narrative volumes. A fifteenth volume contains a cumulative index and list of errata and various annexes.) Because Morison's work is his own history.

Rather than the authorized or official record of the Navy, he has room for personal judgment in his treatment of Navy heroes and for his own conclusions in considering such questions as the justification of dropping the atom bomb on Japan. Hanson W. Baldwin, the military editor of the New York Times, expressed the view in the rimes Book Review (November 6, 1960).

That among the minor defects of Morison's cycle was an occasional indulgence in "sweeping generalizations impossible to prove or disprove." He found, however, that "the virtues are self-evident a combination of painstaking research and clear dramatic writing in a sweeping pageant of action." During the fifteen postwar years that Morison winked on his naval history he wrote eight other books.

Also, including The Story of the Old Colony of New Plymouth (Knopf, 1956) and Intellectual Life of Colonial New England (N.Y. Univ. Press, 1956), as well as John Paul Jones; A Sailor's Biography (Little, 1959), for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize in biography. Columbia University awarded him its Bancroft Prize in 1949 for the third volume of his history of World War II naval operations.

The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 1931-42 (1948), and in 1962 he received the Gold Medal for History and Biography of the National Institute of Arts and Letters for the excellence of his work as a whole. His autobiographical One Boy's Boston was published by Houghton Mifflin Company in the autumn of 1962.

Since August 1951 Morison has been on the Navy's honorary retirement list in the rank of rear admiral. Since 1955 he has also been retired from teaching at Harvard, having become Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History, Emeritus, after holding that professorship in active service for almost fifteen years.

Semiretired as a historian, however, he began working on his Oxford History of the American People before the final volume of his World War II cycle was off the press in 1965. Morison has also continued to add to the scores of articles that he has written for scholarly journals and for more popular periodicals like the Saturday Evening Post.

He has been a member of the editorial boards of the New England Quarterly and the American Neptune; president of the American Antiquarian Society, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and the American Historical Society; and a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society, the British Academy, and the Royal Academy of History in Madrid.

His many other professional affiliations have included the chairmanship of the council of historians of the Institute of Early American History at Williamsburg, Virginia, trusteeship of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, and vice-presidency of the Naval Records Society. Many colleges and universities — Yale, Oxford, Notre Dame, and Columbia, among others, have awarded Morison honorary degrees.

He is a member of the Charitable Irish Society and of several clubs, including the St. Botolph and Somerset in Boston and the Athenaeum in London. His church is the Episcopal. For some forty years he had been a member of the Democratic party, but in 1952 he voted Republican in support of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Samuel Eliot Morison was six feet one inch tall and has the hale look of a seagoing man. The dignified, somewhat reserved manner generally associated with a Boston Brahmin. Samuel Eliot Morison and Elizabeth Shaw Greene, a painter, were married on May 28, 1910, and had four children, Elizabeth Gray (Mrs. Edward Spingarn), Emily Marshall (Mrs. Brooks Beck), Peter Greene, and Catharine. Morison's first wife died in 1945, and in December 1949 he married Priscilla Barton of Baltimore.

She has accompanied him on his travels to the Far East to revisit the scenes of World War II and on the trips, he took to collect material for his biography of John Paul Jones. She also shares Morison's hobby of sailing his yawl out of Northeast Harbor on Maine's Mount Desert Island, his lifelong favorite vacation resort, which he celebrated in The Story of Mount Desert Island (Atlantic-Little, 1960).

Many his books are Mariner 1955, Freedom in Contemporary Society in 1956, Old Colony of New Playmouth in 1956, William Hickling Prescott in 1958, Nathaniel Holmes Morison in 1957, A Sailor’s Biography in 1959, Story of Mount Desert Island, Maine in 1960, One Boy's Boston, in 1962, Introduction to Whaler Out of New Bedford (1962), and A History of the Constitution of Massachusetts in 1963.

Honors and Awards

Samuel Eliot Morison received 11 honorary doctoral degrees and many military honors, literary prizes, foreign and national awards. The list includes Balzan Prize, Legion of Merit, two Pulitzer Prizes, two Bancroft Prizes and Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1979, the frigate USS Samuel Eliot Morison was launched, in the honor of S.E. Morison by the U.S. Further, there is a bronze statue of Morison depicting in sailor’s oilskin.

Death

In 1955, when he retired from Harvard University and devoted his rest of life for writing purposes. His home otherwise is still Boston's Brimmer Street. He died on May 15, 1976, at the age of 88 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. You can read the bibliography of Samuel Eliot Morison on Wikipedia.

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Tuesday 11 February 2020

NORTHERN BOULEVARD, LOOKING EAST TOWARD 82nd STREET, SEPTEMBER 13, 1933.

The main shopping district of Jackson Heights. The apartment house at the right, erected in 1914, was the first garden-apartment building built by the Queensboro Corporation. The Boulevard Theater, the first theater in Jackson Heights, is visible just ahead. (Photo by Frederick J. Weber; The Queens Borough Public Library.)

NORTHERN BOULEVARD, LOOKING EAST TOWARD 82nd STREET, SEPTEMBER 13, 1933.

MAURICE’S WOODS, ca. 1900.

Maurice’s Woods was the name given by Maspeth old-timers to a 72-acre forested tract bounded by what was to become Maurice Avenue, 66th Street, Jay Avenue, and the Long Island Expressway.

James Maurice, a very prominent New York lawyer, moved to Maspeth in 1840 and built a mansion on the south side of Maspeth Avenue about 800 feet west of the railroad tracks.

In 1850 he was elected to the Assembly and in 1852 to Congress. In 1882 he donated the Woods to the Episcopal church as a site for a seminary, but the moving of the diocesan see to Garden City put an end to the project.

For years the woods were enjoyed as a park and nature preserve by Maspethites, while houses grew up on all sides. Finally, in October 1920 the church sold off the track for development, and by 1922 streets and houses had wiped out all traces of the former green oasis. (Courtesy of The Queens Borough Public Library, Long Island Division.)

MAURICE’S WOODS, ca. 1900.

Friday 7 February 2020

California Style Paddle Manufactured by Denver's Edward Gallatin in 1862

Pistol Model of 1842-54

Johannes Havelius - The Man Who Map the Moon

Johannes Hevelius published the first detailed map of the surface of the Moon in 1647. He was born on 28 January 1611 in Danzig (Gdansk), now a city in Poland. His German name was Jan Hewel, Latinized to Hevelius. Titled Selenographia, the map was based on his own astronomical observations from the roof of his house.

Like many 17th-century astronomers who supported themselves financially with another occupation, Hevelius represents an era when no distinction was made between accomplished amateurs and professionals in this science. Johannes Hevelius was a successful merchant and city councilor and mayor of Danzig.

His rooftop observatory, built-in 1641 by his three connected houses. His splendid instruments, books were destroyed by fire in 1679 including a massive Keplerian telescope of 150ft focal length. Many of his observations on star locations and comet paths were gathered and published posthumously by his wife in Uranographia (1690). Mapping the Moon in the mid-17th century represented a clear departure from the pre-Copernican view that celestial bodies were made of completely different materials than terrestrial ones.

With designations of mountain ranges and the incorrect designation of flat plains as mares or seas, the astronomical community came to accept that Earth, Moon, and the planets were similar in form, an indication of the diminution of the special place in the universe previously assumed to be held by Earth and its human inhabitants. Further, he successfully unearthed four comments in 1652, 1661, 1672 and 1677. These discoveries were published in his thesis which believes such bodies revolve around the Sun in parabolic paths.

Johannes Havelius considered himself as being a citizen of the Polish world. Because he believed he has worked for the glory of his country and for the good of science. Also, he was an exorbitant hard worker, while not boasting much, executed his work with most effort per his abilities.

He was famous due to his brilliant caliber in astronomy and regarded as “the founder of lunar topography”. His father and mother were wealthy German merchants. In 1660, Polish Queen Marie Louise Gonzaga visit his observatory and hugely applaud his efforts. His health was deteriorated by the loss of his instruments and books, so he died on 28 January 1687 at the age of 76 in Danzig (his hometown).

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Saturday 1 February 2020

1902 White House reconstruction discovery of an icehouse originally constructed under Thomas Jefferson.

An airplane visit to an Eskimo village, 1938

Coronation of Wilhelm I as King of Prussia, Königsberg, 18th October 1861

the first German Emperor from 18 January 1871 to his death in 1888, the first Head of State of a united Germany. Perhaps, but a mustachioed man named Otto would like to have a word with you.

TBD Devastators on the deck of the USS Enterprise. 1942.

Corporal Louis B. Swingle standing in front of a wall map

Corporal Louis B. Swingle standing in front of a wall map, between two ladders, in the United States 8th Air Force headquarters operations room, possibly outside London, England during World War II - 1940s

16-year-old Willi Hübner being awarded the Iron Cross for bravery under fire, March 1945

Willi Hübner was a 16-year-old boy who served as a messenger in the Führer Grenadier Division and was awarded the Iron Cross for bravery under fire during the successful German attempt to recapture the town of Lauban during the Upper Silesian Offensive. He would survive the war and died in 2011.

Civil War veteran poses with a fighter jet, 1955

Civil War veteran poses with a fighter jet, 1955 - “Uncle Bill” Lundy claimed to be the last living Confederate Civil War veteran in Florida, and spent his 107th birthday at Eglin AFB, Florida in January 1955.

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Statue of David by Michelangelo

Statue of David by Michelangelo, encased in bricks to prevent damage from bombs, during world war 2

Friday 31 January 2020

John Hays Hammond Jr. – The Father of Radio Control

An "inventor's inventor," whose hundreds of patents underlie much of our modern technology. John Hays Hammond, Jr., lives and works in a medieval-style castle, which he built on the rocky New England coast near Gloucester, Massachusetts. He has made many contributions to the development of radio, television, and radar. And his pioneering work in the field of remote-control radio, begun more than a half century ago, is basic to the guided missile program.

His early developments in frequency modulation broadcasting were the precursors of many modern radio-electronic techniques. He heads his own organization, the Hammond Research Corporation, and has served as a consultant to several firms and government agencies.

John Hays Hammond Jr. was born in San Francisco on April 13, 1888 to John Hays and Natalie (Harris) Hammond. He has two brothers, Richard P. and Harris Hammond, and a sister, Natalie Harris Hammond. His father, an American geologist and mining engineer, was closely associated with Cecil Rhodes in the exploration of the South African gold and diamond fields.

Upon returning to the United States, the senior Hammond worked as chief mining engineer for the Guggenheim family at a salary reputed to be one million dollars a year. In 1911 he served as special ambassador representing the United States at the coronation of King George V of England.

As if an illustrious father were not enough, John Hays Hammond, Jr.'s, uncle, John Hays, was one of the founders of the Texas Rangers. "As an engineer, I would always be second best to my father, and as a man of action, I could never hope to compete with my uncle," Hammond told Richard H. Miller in an interview for True magazine (November 1960). "But I had a compulsion to compete with both. I wasn't going to waste my life clipping stock coupons."

Living wherever his father's fortunes took him, Hammond grew up in England, Washington, D.C., and Gloucester, Massachusetts. He began to demonstrate his inventiveness at an early age. His father numbered among his friends such noted scientists and inventors as the Wright brothers, Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Guglielmo Marconi, and the Yugoslav inventor Nikola Tesla.

Tesla's early studies in electric power transmission formed the basis of much of Hammond's later work in this field. For his preparatory education Hammond attended the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. There he developed his first invention, a circuit breaker connected to the door of his room, enabling him to circumvent the school's eight P.M. lights-out rule.

After graduating from Lawrenceville, he attended his father's alma mater, the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, from which he received the B.S. degree in 1910. Even before his graduation, Hammond was intrigued by the prospect of remote control by radio, but he was afraid that some other inventor might have staked out a prior claim to the field.

To familiarize himself with the latest developments in this area, he took a job as file clerk in the Patent Office in Washington, D.C. In the course of the next two years, he became an authority on patents in radio and telephony. He also became convinced that the field of remote radio control was wide open and was ready to begin his own work.

Aided by his father, Hammond established the Hammond Radio Research Laboratory in 1911. His initial outlay for equipment came close to a quarter of a million dollars, but as he later said: "I had an eminently successful father who was both willing and able to support my costly experiments."

When for the first time he succeeded in controlling a boat by radio his excitement was so great that he forgot to turn off the controls, and the boat was wrecked on the rocks. It was soon replaced, however, and before long his crewless "ghost ship" was frightening the fishermen in Gloucester Bay.

When, on the eve of World War I, Hammond successfully incorporated a gyroscope into the boat's receiving system, he established the basis of all radio control. Using this Gyrad principle (the blending of gyroscope and radio), he was able, in March 1914, to send an experimental yacht from Gloucester to Boston and back, 120 miles, without any human control on board.

After perfecting Gyrad, Hammond went on to develop a system to prevent enemy jamming of radio orders and to work on a radio-guided torpedo. He also designed many other devices for military and civilian radio communication. By 1916 he held over 100 patents of military value and the War Department asked Congress to appropriate $750,000 to pay him for their use.

Although the House approved the appropriation the Senate failed to do so, and it was not until 1932 that Hammond finally was reimbursed. Earlier Hammond had been in some difficulty with the government over a light incendiary bomb that he had invented in 1914.

Neither the American government nor the British government was interested in buying the bomb, but when incendiary bombs started showering London during World War I, Hammond was accused of selling out to the Germans. It was only when one of his former employees was caught spying and confessed to having stolen the plans for the bomb that he was fully cleared.

Another of Hammond's early inventions an "electric dog" with selenium cell "eyes" that enabled it to follow a moving beam of light was a step toward the development of radar. The proved a sensation when it was sent on a vaudeville tour, and it later served as a model for the artificial animals now used for psychological study.

In the field of radio Hammond conducted some of the earliest experiments in frequency modulation broadcasting, invented single-dial tuning for radio, filed a patent for telephone amplification (purchased by the Bell Telephone Company for use on its long-distance lines), and made substantial contributions to the development oi the modern radio tube. In 1923 the Radio Corporation of America bought his patents in this field for $500,000.

During the I920's Hammond began to a private communications system that operated by means of radio telephony. After having first offered such a system to the Vatican. He was approached, in 1926, by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who was anxious to obtain a secret communications system. Hammond was greatly impressed by the speed and efficiency with which the dictator was able to make all the needed equipment available to him.

He was soon disillusioned, however, when he found that his system was being used to trap surviving anti- Fascists, among them several Hammond's personal friends. During World War II Hammond was active in the development of various national defense projects, and he worked for a time with the Scientific Research and Development in Washington, D.C.

In 1943 he developed a variable pitch propeller that ensures the most effective use of a ship's power according to operating conditions of the moment. His more recent inventions include a high-speed method of transmitting civilian defense intelligence, known as "Tele spot," and an electronic teaching machine that he developed with a colleague.

In 1961 he worked on a project, sponsored by the United States Navy, for broadcasting from a single station to any part of the world and into outer space. His pioneering work on radio dynamic torpedoes used by the Allies in World War I and World War II forms the basis of the present-day development of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

One of Hammond's main interests is music, and it has served as a stimulus for additional projects, which he developed with the help of such friends as Serge Koussevitzky, Igor Stravinsky, and Leopold Stokowski.

His inventions in this field include a "dynamic amplifier" for the compression, expansion, and reduction of noise in audio systems; a new type of reflecting modulator for pianos; an "accentor" for improving the tonal quality of pipe organs; and the "Oirafon," a combination piano, radio, and phonograph.

Among Hammond's lesser inventions are a naval war game for adults, a toy locomotive for children, a painless stove (its aluminum foil surface is thrown away after each use), a mobile apartment unit, a device for injecting sauces into roasts, and a magnetized tray that prevents food from spilling into the laps of air travelers.

He also invented a luxury shaving cream that proved too expensive to market and a hair restorer that failed to improve his own balding condition. Hammond's home and laboratory are in "Abbadia Mare," a medieval-style castle near Gloucester, Massachusetts, which he began to build in the 1920's to house his collection of medieval art and artifacts.

It overlooks the Reef of Norman's Woe, the site of Henrj Wadsworth Longfellow's The Wreck of the Hesperus. Complete with a moat and drawbridge, towers, battlements, and narrow stone staircases, it incorporates in its structure portions of various European buildings.

One bedroom had been an inquisition chamber; other rooms are composed of what were once a beer hall, an inn. a catacomb, and the adjunct to a cathedral. An inner courtyard with a Roman pool is surrounded by tropical foliage, which is kept lush by artificial rainstorms.

The outstanding feature of the castle is its Great Hall with an eight)'-five-foot tower, designed to house a gigantic pipe organ, which Hammond began to assemble in the 1920's. This instrument, which has 10,000 pipes, four manuals, and 1-44 stops, many of which were taken from old churches, is one of the most magnificent in the world.

Occasionally organ recitals are given in the (neat Hall, which seats about 200 persons. Such noted organists as Virgil Fox and Richard Ellsasser have used the organ to make recordings. Hammond, who serves as director and curator of the castle museum, opens the castle to the public during July and August.

In 1912 Hammond served as United States delegate to the International Radio-Telegraphic Conference in London, and in 1927 he was appointed by President Calvin Coolidge to represent the United States at the International Radio Conference in Washington, D.C.

He has served on advisory boards concerned with national defense and has acted as a consulting engineer for several firms, including the General Electric Company and the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. He is president of the Hammond Research Corporation and serves as a research consultant and a director of the Radio Corporation of America.

Hammond was awarded an honorary ScD. degree by George Washington University in 1919. He received the Elliott Cresson Award of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 1959, and in the same year the Institute of Radio Engineers conferred upon him its Fellow award. He is a Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy.

An early member of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Hammond is a former treasurer and director of that organization and has served as chairman of its special committees on membership and finance. He is a governor of the Aero Club, vice-president of the American Society of Aeronautical Engineers, and a Fellow of the American Geographic Society.

He holds honorary memberships in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the National Institute of Inventors, and the Harvard Aeronautic Club. Other organizations to which he belongs include the Royal Society of Arts, the American Society of Aeronautical Engineers, and the University and Explorers clubs.

John Hays Hammond. Jr. was married to the former Irene Fenton, an artist, who died in December 1959. They had no children. Hammond is five feet eight inches tall, weighs 170 pounds, and has brown eyes, thinning brown hair, and what has been described as a "Byronic profile."

He lives in his castle with a staff of servants, his English butler, and several generations of Siamese cats. He generally chesses informally, dislikes crowds, and chooses as his companions’ artists, musicians, actors, and playwrights. He was a connoisseur of fine wines, and his interests include astrology and sailing.

A seasoned world traveler, he has taken part in expeditions to Venezuela and Labrador. Taking the advice of Alexander Graham Bell, he does most of his work late at night. According to Richard H. Miller, Hammond is "a man who has done exactly what he wanted to do, exactly as he planned to do it, and has relished every moment of it. John Hays Hammond Jr. was died on February 12, 1965 in New York.

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