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The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a U.S. federal agency founded on March 3, 1915 to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research.
On October 1, 1958 the agency was dissolved, and its assets and personnel formed the core of the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
NACA was pronounced 'En Ay Cee Ay' rather than 'Nakka', and the name remains familiar in the automotive world for the NACA duct, a form of air intake, or to those in the aircraft industry, as several series of NACA-developed aerofoils are still being used in new design.
Old NACA hands believed that their independence from political pressures was partly the reason that NACA was the premier aeronautical research institution in the world during the 1920s and 1930s.
NACA engineers tested 78 airfoil shapes in its wind tunnels and in 1933 issued Technical Report No. 460, "The Characteristics of 78 Related Airfoil Sections from Tests in the Variable-Density Wind Tunnel." The authors of this report described a four-digit scheme that defined and classified the shape of the airfoil.
The NACA also studied the problems of flight in the upper atmosphere and at hypersonic speeds, which would lead to the development of the rocket-propelled X-15 research airplane.
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