Archives West Finding Aid

The personal section of this collection consists of miscellaneous personal, financial, and travel information as well as some family materials. The second half of the section is a collection of Gymaufa Ganu (an American Welsh association) materials. This portion largely consists of programs, musical songbooks, and meeting materials for this association.

This short segment of the collection contains two boxes of general, family, religious and general correspondence. Other correspondence remains in the collection listed under a topical reference. The other two boxes in this section are collections of correspondence and other pertinent materials to and from specific individuals. The listing is toponymical.

By far the most extensive section of the collection, the publications section houses materials written by both Thomas and other scientists. The first three boxes of this section--boxes nine through eleven--contain Thomas' published articles and papers. Also included are several speeches and unpublished articles. A complete bibliographic listing of the published work is located in folder one, box nine. This reference was compiled by Thomas' secretary and lists the articles and publications in the order in which they were produced. Six of the seventy-seven articles and publications were not found within the body of the collection. The second half of this collection is an accumulation of reports written and compiled by scientists and publishers other than Thomas. The reports and articles are unfoldered and stacked in the boxes. The last three boxes of this section are comprised of scientific instrument catalogs. Some of the catalogs, undoubtedly, advertise the instruments Thomas developed. Others are advertising circulars and solicitations for instruments common in Thomas' field.

This section is comprised of materials relating to Thomas' career as a scientist, his labwork in materials testing for ASTM, and his preliminary drafts and references for his published and non-published papers. The first six boxes of this section are lab notebooks and reports from several agencies and companies with which Thomas affiliated. Of important note are the Oxford University notebooks containing data and experimentation notes on the formation of formaldehyde. These books date from 1915-1919 when Thomas was working at Oxford and, later, in England on chemical warfare. The bulk of this section of the collection is the "Paper Preparation and Technical Work" section. This portion of the collection houses all of Thomas' preliminary work as a tester, consultant, and scientist-technical writer. The materials are grouped topically. In some cases, it may be necessary to peruse all folders with a similar title for relevant materials and overlapping information. The third segment of this section houses material relevant to Thomas' varied committee tenureships. The material is largely composed of meeting notices, memos, and correspondence about upcoming meetings. The various organizations include (but are not limited to): AARP, ACS, AMS, AEC, ASTM and others. The first four boxes are an alphabetic arrangement of small folders of several organizations. The other boxes are complete committees in and of themselves. Following the committees section is a small section entitled, "Seminars, Conferences and Workshops." This sections contains various information about seminars in which Thomas was a participant and in which he was a director. The first two boxes are an alphabetical and chronological arrangement of such conferences. The third box is entirely devoted to one large seminar: The Minneapolis Symposium.

The final section of this segment is a collection of court material and cases in which Thomas was called as an air pollution consultant or expert witness.