Ames went to Clark University in 1914 to study physiological optics, making enough of an impression to be made one of the eighteen founding members of the Optical Society of America in 1916. When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, he served briefly as a captain in the aviation service, then as the overseer of a machine shop in which prototypes for instruments were developed. While in the army he continued his studies of optics, in part because one of the soldiers in that shop (with whom he became a friend and collaborator) was Charles Proctor, professor of physics at Dartmouth College.