After his arrival, according to THE TECH, MIT's newspaper, daily weather observations from the ground level to a height of more than three miles (5 km) above Boston will be made by meteorologists of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in an airplane equipped to record temperature, barometric pressure and relative humidity.
To carry out this work, MIT secured funds to purchase a Cessna cabin monoplane powered with a 120 horsepower (89 kW) Warner engine.
The daily flights of this plane were part of a research program designed to gain new knowledge to aid in weather forecasting by measuring the variation of temperature and moisture at various altitudes in different air currents.
The research plane has places for three passengers in addition to the pilot, and was fitted with various scientific instruments for special weather studies, including a meteorograph used for registering temperature, barometric pressure and relative humidity.
The MIT meteorology survey program was directed by Lange, who for several years was engaged in similar activities for the Rhon-Rossiten Geschellschaft at Darmstadt, and also on the Wasserkuppe, the birthplace of the motorless airplane.
In 1932, Time magazine published an article the Third Annual National Soaring Meet in Elmira, New York where an enthusiastic little group of glider pilots had prayed that the winds of the Chemung Valley would persist.
Wenner-Gren also diversified his interests into the ownership of newspapers, banks and arms manufacturers, and acquired many of the holdings of the disgraced safety-match tycoon Ivar Kreuger.
A USAF contract awarded in 1959 to train chimpanzees for the Mercury Space Flight program marked the major shift of activity in the laboratory to predominantly biomedical engineering research.
This period also saw the establishment of the U.K. College of Medicine and the research in the area of human response to vibrations was developed through collaborative efforts with the Department of Physiology and Biophysics.
The NASA research program prompted the 1966 expansion of the laboratory to house the 50 feet (15 m) diameter centrifuge for the investigation of gravity effects on earth organisms.
He was a man of many talents, a creative inventor and designer with interests ranging from pest control by aircraft to training chimpanzees for the Space Program.