Interlingua Institute records

1921-1990 [bulk 1930-1980]

The Interlingua Institute was founded in March of 1970 by Alexander Gode, Henry Fischbach, and Alice Morris Sturges for the purpose of continuing the work of promoting the use of Interlingua, an artificial international language developed earlier by the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). Alexander Gode, the Interlingua Institute's first executive director, had been director of research at IALA where he supervised the publication of the first Interlingua - English dictionary (Interlingua-English Dictionary,1951). Following Gode's death (August 1970) there was an interregnum until 1973 when the Institute's board of directors named Frank Esterhill executive director. At that time the Institute's board of directors included Alison Gode (wife of Alexander Gode), Henry Fishbach, president and treasurer, and Alice Morris Sturges, vice president. Other directors during the Institute's corporate existence included Kurt Gingold, Deanna Lindberg Hammond, and Leland B. Yeager.

Under Frank Esterhill's directorship the task of promoting the use of Interlingua as an international language took place largely through the medium of professional conferences and seminars held at the Modern Language Association, the American Translators' Association, and the International Linguistic Association. Beginning in 1974 the Institute began exhibiting publications in Interlingua at meetings of variouis professional associations, and it acted as a clearing house and dessiminator of publications by European - especially Scandinavian - organizations dedicated to the employment of Interlingua as an international language of communication.

The International Auxiliary Language Association which was the progenitor of the Interlingua Institute, was founded in 1924 by Alice Vanderbilt Morris (1874-1950) and her husband, Dave Hennen Morris (1872-1944), a New York City lawyer and diplomat who was appointed U. S. Ambassador to Belgium by President Roosevelt in 1933. Mrs. Morris was a great granddaughter of the capitalist, Cornelius Vanderbilt. The Morrises proposed to research and develop an international auxiliary language which would be superior to other languages such as Esperanto and Ido. In forming the IALA the Morrises acted upon the suggestion of Dr. Frederick Gardner Cottrell (1877-1948) a prominent scientist who was chairman of the Committee on International Auxiliary Language of the International Research Council. Joining the Morrises in support of their endeavor were several other persons prominent in New York academic and community circles including Earle B. Babcock, John Dewey, Stephen P. Duggan, John H. Finley, Alfred N. Goldsmith, and Herbert N. Shenton. Through the years the IALA collaborated with many outstanding linguists including Willem de Cock Buning, W. E. Collinson, Helen E. Eaton, Alexander Gode, Albert Guéard, Otto Jespersen, Roman Jakobson, C. K. Ogden, Giuseppe Peano, René de Saussure, Edward Sapir, E. Clark Stillman, and E. L. Thorndike.

Funded annually by the Research Corporation, and by grants from the Carnegie Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and by generous gifts from the Morrises, the work of the IALA was carried on under the guidance of Alice Vanderbilt Morris and her linguistice advisors, and by the organization's research staff. During the decade of the 1930s the IALA sponsored numerous international meetings, conferences, and congresses of linguists in what became an unsuccessful attempt to achieve a consensus among linguists for a base language or languages on which to construct a new artificial language. During the war years (1940s), the IALA, under the guidance of its directors of research, E. Clark Stillman, Alexander Gode, and André Martinet, proceeded to perfect a grammar and an international vocabulary derived from the living European languages. With the publication in 1951 of its definitive Interlingua-English Dictionary followed by the publication of the Interlingua Grammar by Alexander Gode and Hugh E. Blair, the work of the IALA had come to an end. The organization was officially dissolved in 1953 although its newsletter Novas de IALA (later, Novas de Interlingua) continued to be published for a few more years. During the following years several scientific works were published in Interlingua including a scientific journal Spectroscopia Molecular which was begun by the physicist, Forrest F. Cleveland, and a monthy abstract of scientific articles by Alexander Gode entitled Scientia International.