Karl Compton and American physics

My pleasure in taking part in these exercises, in which we dedicate the Karl Taylor Compton Board Room of the American Institute of Physics, is heightened by the opportunity it gives to look back once again over the years when Karl Compton was one of us, and among physicists, in human stature, the greatest. Though I do not think the old days were any better than today's, or even so good, it is pleasant to think back to the happy youthful years of American physics, when papers in The Physical Review were less likely to have as many as seven authors, and better yet, when they never failed to appear because of some secret classification. Those were the days when the name of K. T. Compton blazed high in the firmament of electronics.