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The formation and behavior of snow and ice crystals were a lifelong interest of Schaefer's, and in his time at General Electric he was able to focus on the subject during the World War II years as ice related to the safety of U.S. Air Force planes. Schaefer and Irving Langmuir's interest in that topic grew as a result of their World War II-era contract work with the military, and the experiments they conducted after the war's end led directly to their Project Cirrus contract in 1947—an undertaking so extensive that their work in that area merited its own series in this collection. Much of their foundational work in snow and ice composition and behavior was grounded in observations and experiments conducted on Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Schaefer discovered during this time that ice crystals and snowflakes could be captured and observed using Formvar plastic. Using this method, he documented very specific data about ice and snow before creating some of the first replicas of specific snowflake shapes. The work of Schaefer and his colleagues regarding ice research includes handwritten notes, drawings, charts, photographs, reports, and correspondence specific to ice, snow, and Mount Washington.

The inspiration for Schaefer's work with cloud seeding began during his experiments with Irving Langmuir during World War II. At that time they were under contract with the military for other weather-related reasons, but their research led them to wonder about the possibilities of controlling weather beyond military needs. Schaefer accomplished some of his most important foundational work with cloud seeding in 1946, before General Electric joined in another contract with the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Army Signal Corps. These records document some of Schaefer's initial work with cloud seeding, before the official birth of Project Cirrus. Researchers will also find about a dozen files on Project Blowdown, a cloud seeding operation conducted in Honduras to aid the United Fruit Company.

This subseries is comprised of various research data retained by Schaefer that were not filed specifically with cloud seeding or ice and snow research. These are the notes, graphs, drawings, and photographs of experiments that supported later discoveries in his larger projects. Notes and photos in this subseries include subjects such as surface tension, monomolecular layers, smoke generation, fog, uses of calgon, and electron microscopy. Also of note are his observations on precipitation and precipitation static, which he worked on with Irving Langmuir during World War II. While the bulk of the notes are Schaefer's own, there are also papers that belonged to Langmuir and various other scientists who shared observations with Schaefer.