The Vincent J. Schaefer Papers span virtually all of Schaefer's life. Includes written materials and Schaefer's extensive photograph and film collections. The Biographical and Autobiographical Information section contains Schaefer's personal journals (1948-1993); his calendars for 1960-1993, as well as detailed itineraries for 1962-1968; drafts of Schaefer's unpublished autobiographies; several autobiographical articles and addresses; newspaper and journal articles written about Schaefer; and correspondence and inventory lists reflecting Schaefer's involvement in the disposition of his papers, library, and photograph and film collections. Also includes correspondence, resumes, time lines, articles, outlines, and miscellaneous materials, some of which Schaefer prepared in anticipation of writing his autobiography, providing background information on Schaefer's life and career. With the exception of his work as a machinist apprentice at the General Electric Company and his work with the Davey Institute of Tree Surgery in the 1920s, for which there are relatively few correspondence and other documentation in the Papers, the rest of Schaefer's professional career is well documented. Correspondence, research notes, and reports make up the bulk of the materials documenting Schaefer's work at the General Electric Research Laboratory, both on projects with Irving Langmuir and on his own. Each member of the Research Laboratory was required to keep a notebook documenting his or her work and discoveries, and have the entries witnessed by another member of the Research Laboratory. During his years at General Electric, Schaefer used several notebooks and in his retirement he prepared a detailed index and time line of the topics covered in his Research Laboratory notebooks. In addition to his Research Laboratory notebooks, Schaefer also kept his loose research notes and data regarding experiments he carried out at both the Research Laboratory and at the laboratory he had in his home. In addition to the research notes and reports reflecting Schaefer's research in the 1930s in topics such as surface chemistry techniques, electron microscope techniques, polarization, the affinity of ice for various surfaces, protein and other monolayers, studies of protein films, television tube brightness, and submicroscopic particulates, the General Electric Research Laboratory subgroup includes many photographs of snowflakes and magazine and news articles regarding Schaefer's development in the early 1940s of a method to preserve individual snowflakes. Correspondence, research notes, and collected data also document Schaefer's work with Langmuir in the early 1940s on the development of smoke generators, binaural sound for submarine detection, aircraft icing, and precipitation static. Also includes the documentation for Project Cirrus, which grew out of Schaefer's discovery in 1946 of a method to seed clouds.