118-786: Endless Frontier may refer to: Science, The Endless Frontier , a 1945 report by Vannevar Bush to the President of the United States Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century U.S. Innovation and Competition Act . formerly known as the Endless Frontier Act Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier Topics referred to by
236-404: A differential analyzer , a mechanical analog computer with some digital components that could solve differential equations with as many as 18 independent variables. An offshoot of the work at MIT by Bush and others was the beginning of digital circuit design theory. The memex, which he began developing in the 1930s (heavily influenced by Emanuel Goldberg 's "Statistical Machine" from 1928)
354-788: A means of detecting submarines by measuring the disturbance in the Earth's magnetic field. His device worked as designed, but only from a wooden ship; attempts to get it to work on a metal ship such as a destroyer failed. Bush left Tufts in 1919, although he remained employed by AMRAD, and joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he worked under Dugald C. Jackson . In 1922, he collaborated with fellow MIT professor William H. Timbie on Principles of Electrical Engineering , an introductory textbook. AMRAD's lucrative contracts from World War I had been cancelled, and Bush attempted to reverse
472-470: A Military Policy Committee recommendation stating that information given to the British should be limited to technologies that they were actively working on and should not extend to post-war developments. In July 1943, on a visit to London to learn about British progress on antisubmarine technology, Bush, Stimson, and Bundy met with Anderson, Lord Cherwell , and Winston Churchill at 10 Downing Street . At
590-571: A book and puts it on a shelf and nobody ever reads it." On August 23, 1938, Bush was appointed to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor of NASA. Its chairman Joseph Sweetman Ames became ill, and Bush, as vice chairman, soon had to act in his place. In December 1938, NACA asked for $ 11 million to establish a new aeronautical research laboratory in Sunnyvale, California , to supplement
708-526: A budget of $ 455,000 for its first year. Loomis suggested that the lab should be run by the Carnegie Institution, but Bush convinced him that it would best be run by MIT. The Radiation Laboratory , as it came to be known, tested its airborne radar from an Army B-18 on March 27, 1941. By mid-1941, it had developed SCR-584 radar , a mobile radar fire control system for antiaircraft guns . In September 1940, Norbert Wiener approached Bush with
826-568: A continuous signal rather than short pulses. The NDRC created a special Section T chaired by Merle Tuve of the CIW, with Commander William S. Parsons as special assistant to Bush and liaison between the NDRC and the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd). One of CIW staff members that Tuve recruited to Section T in 1940 was James Van Allen . In April 1942, Bush placed Section T directly under
944-437: A contract basis. In 1922, NACA had 100 employees. By 1938, it had 426. In addition to formal assignments, staff were encouraged to pursue unauthorized "bootleg" research, provided that it was not too exotic. The result was a long string of fundamental breakthroughs, including " thin airfoil theory " (1920s), " NACA engine cowl " (1930s), the " NACA airfoil " series (1940s), and the " area rule " for supersonic aircraft (1950s). On
1062-683: A crash program to create an atomic bomb . When the NDRC was formed, the Committee on Uranium was placed under it, reporting directly to Bush as the Uranium Committee. Bush reorganized the committee, strengthening its scientific component by adding Tuve, George B. Pegram , Jesse W. Beams , Ross Gunn and Harold Urey . When the OSRD was formed in June 1941, the Uranium Committee was again placed directly under Bush. For security reasons, its name
1180-532: A dead end. Taffy Bowen and John Cockcroft of the Tizard Mission then produced a cavity magnetron , a device more advanced than anything the Americans had seen, with a power output of around 10 kW at 10 cm, enough to spot the periscope of a surfaced submarine at night from an aircraft. To exploit the invention, Bush decided to create a special laboratory. The NDRC allocated the new laboratory
1298-464: A feasible front line fighter by European standards, and so North American began development of a new aircraft. The British government chose a NACA-developed airfoil for the fighter, which enabled it to perform dramatically better than previous models. This aircraft became known as the P-51 Mustang . After early experiments by Opel RAK with rocket propulsion leading to the first public flight of
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#17327721669141416-539: A fire broke out at the plant, Bush and the other test men were suspended. He returned to Tufts in October 1914 to teach mathematics, and spent the 1915 summer break working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as an electrical inspector. Bush was awarded a $ 1,500 scholarship to study at Clark University as a doctoral student of Arthur Gordon Webster , but Webster wanted Bush to study acoustics, a popular field at
1534-644: A job with Tufts, where he became involved with the American Radio and Research Corporation (AMRAD), which began broadcasting music from the campus on March 8, 1916. The station owner, Harold Power, hired him to run the company's laboratory, at a salary greater than that which Bush drew from Tufts. In 1917, following the United States' entry into World War I, he went to work with the National Research Council . He attempted to develop
1652-440: A mathematician could have such good times together. I only wish that I could get the real vital grasp of mathematics that he has of the basic principles of physics. Parry Moon and Stratton were acknowledged, as was M.S. Vallarta who "wrote the first set of class notes which I used." An offshoot of the work at MIT was the beginning of digital circuit design theory by one of Bush's graduate students, Claude Shannon . Working on
1770-481: A microcosm of the information society, with the boundaries tightly drawn by the interests and experiences of a major scientist of the time, rather than the more open knowledge spaces of the 21st century. Bush provides a core vision of the importance of information to industrial / scientific society, using the image of an "information explosion" arising from the unprecedented demands on scientific production and technological application of World War II. He outlines
1888-674: A million dollars. It merged with General Plate Company to form Metals & Controls Corporation in 1931, and with Texas Instruments in 1959. Texas Instruments sold it to Bain Capital in 2006, and it became a separate company again as Sensata Technologies in 2010. In 1924, Bush and Marshall teamed up with physicist Charles G. Smith, who had invented a voltage-regulator tube called the S-tube. The device enabled radios, which had previously required two different types of batteries, to operate from mains power . Marshall had raised $ 25,000 to set up
2006-576: A model for the discussion of similar issues, an "opening wedge". He was less successful in promoting his ideas in peacetime with President Harry Truman, than he had been under wartime conditions with Roosevelt. In " As We May Think ", an essay published by the Atlantic Monthly in July 1945, Bush wrote: "This has not been a scientist's war; it has been a war in which all have had a part. The scientists, burying their old professional competition in
2124-433: A nation as well as military necessity that this challenge ( Sputnik ) be met by an energetic program of research and development for the conquest of space. ... It is accordingly proposed that the scientific research be the responsibility of a national civilian agency working in close cooperation with the applied research and development groups required for weapon systems development by the military. The pattern to be followed
2242-590: A pen that plotted the terrain over which it traveled. It was the first of a string of inventions. On graduation in 1913 he received both Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees. After graduation, Bush worked at General Electric (GE) in Schenectady, New York , for $ 14 a week. As a "test man," he assessed equipment to ensure that it was safe. He transferred to GE's plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts , to work on high voltage transformers , but after
2360-455: A proposal to build a digital computer. Bush declined to provide NDRC funding for it on the grounds that he did not believe that it could be completed before the end of the war. The supporters of digital computers were disappointed at the decision, which they attributed to a preference for outmoded analog technology. In June 1943, the Army provided $ 500,000 to build the computer, which became ENIAC ,
2478-629: A rocket plane, the Opel RAK.1 , in 1929 and eventual military programs at Heinkel and Messerschmitt by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, the US entered the race to supersonic planes and spaceflight in the 1940s. Although the Bell X-1 was commissioned by the Air Force and flown by Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager , when it exceeded Mach 1 NACA was officially in charge of the testing and development of
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#17327721669142596-471: A salary of $ 25,000. He was now able to influence research policy in the United States at the highest level, and could informally advise the government on scientific matters. Bush soon discovered that the CIW had serious financial problems, and he had to ask the Carnegie Corporation for additional funding. Bush clashed over leadership of the institute with Cameron Forbes , CIW's chairman of
2714-515: A single sheet of paper describing the agency. Roosevelt approved the proposal in 15 minutes, writing "OK – FDR" on the sheet. With Bush as chairman, the NDRC was functioning even before the agency was officially established by order of the Council of National Defense on June 27, 1940. The organization operated financially on a hand-to-mouth basis with monetary support from the president's emergency fund. Bush appointed four leading scientists to
2832-512: A solid professional relationship. Compton appointed Bush to the newly created post of vice president in 1932. That year Bush also became the dean of the MIT School of Engineering . The two positions came with a salary of $ 12,000 plus $ 6,000 for expenses per annum. The companies Bush helped to found and the technologies he brought to the market made him financially secure, so he was able to pursue academic and scientific studies that he felt made
2950-415: A table-like array of shafts and pens that mechanically simulated and plotted the desired equation. Unlike earlier designs that were purely mechanical, the differential analyzer had both electrical and mechanical components. Among the engineers who made use of the differential analyzer was General Electric 's Edith Clarke , who used it to solve problems relating to electric power transmission. For developing
3068-430: A time when "there is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers." The OSRD continued to function actively until some time after the end of hostilities, but by 1946–1947 it had been reduced to a minimal staff charged with finishing work remaining from
3186-401: A version of information science as a key discipline within the practice of scientific and technical knowledge domains. His view encompasses the problems of information overload and the need to devise efficient mechanisms to control and channel information for use. Bush was concerned that information overload might inhibit the research efforts of scientists. Looking to the future, he predicted
3304-425: Is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory." He wanted the memex to emulate the way the brain links data by association rather than by indexes and traditional, hierarchical storage paradigms, and be easily accessed as "a future device for individual use ... a sort of mechanized private file and library" in the shape of a desk. The memex was also intended as a tool to study the brain itself. The structure of memex
3422-473: Is considered a precursor to the World Wide Web. After thinking about the potential of augmented memory for several years, Bush set out his thoughts at length in " As We May Think ", predicting that "wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified". "As We May Think" was published in
3540-443: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush ( / v æ ˈ n iː v ɑːr / van- NEE -var ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all wartime military R&D
3658-552: Is now used in designing all transonic and supersonic aircraft. NACA experience provided a model for World War II research, the postwar government laboratories, and NACA's successor, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NACA also participated in development of the first aircraft to fly to the "edge of space", North American's X-15 . NACA airfoils are still used on modern aircraft. On November 21, 1957, Hugh Dryden , NACA's director, established
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3776-576: Is that already developed by the NACA and the military services. ... The NACA is capable, by rapid extension and expansion of its effort, of providing leadership in space technology. On March 5, 1958, James Killian , who chaired the President's Science Advisory Committee , wrote a memorandum to the President Dwight D. Eisenhower . Titled, "Organization for Civil Space Programs", it encouraged
3894-487: Is used on all modern supersonic aircraft , and conducted the key compressibility research that enabled the Bell X-1 to break the sound barrier. NACA was established on March 13, 1915, by the federal government through enabling legislation as an emergency measure during World War I to promote industry, academic, and government coordination on war-related projects. It was modeled on similar national agencies found in Europe:
4012-549: The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress to maintain power at high altitude, a team of engineers from NACA solved the problems and created the standards and testing methods used to produce effective superchargers in the future. This enabled the B-17 to be used as a key aircraft in the war effort. The designs and information gained from NACA research on the B-17 were used in nearly every major U.S. military powerplant of
4130-573: The Convair F-102 project and the F11F Tiger . The F-102 was meant to be a supersonic interceptor, but it was unable to exceed the speed of sound, despite the best effort of Convair engineers. The F-102 had actually already begun production when this was discovered, so NACA engineers were sent to quickly solve the problem at hand. The production line had to be modified to allow the modification of F-102s already in production to allow them to use
4248-537: The NACA cowling , and several series of NACA airfoils , which are still used in aircraft manufacturing. During World War II, NACA was described as "The Force Behind Our Air Supremacy" due to its key role in producing working superchargers for high altitude bombers, and for producing the laminar wing profiles for the North American P-51 Mustang . NACA also helped in developing the area rule that
4366-509: The US Army's Ballistic Missile Agency would have a Jupiter C rocket ready to launch a satellite in 1956, only to have it delayed, and the Soviets would launch Sputnik 1 in October 1957. On January 14, 1958, Dryden published "A National Research Program for Space Technology", which stated: It is of great urgency and importance to our country both from consideration of our prestige as
4484-649: The Western Front in October 1944, and spoke to ordnance officers, but no senior commander would meet with him. He was able to meet with Samuel Goudsmit and other members of the Alsos Mission , who assured him that there was no danger from the German project; he conveyed this assessment to Lieutenant General Bedell Smith . In May 1945, Bush became part of the Interim Committee formed to advise
4602-785: The American Appliance Company on July 7, 1922, to build silent refrigerators, with Bush and Smith among its five directors, but changed course and renamed it the Raytheon Company , to make and market the S-tube. The venture made Bush wealthy, and Raytheon ultimately became a large electronics company and defense contractor . Starting in 1927, Bush constructed a differential analyzer , an analog computer that could solve differential equations with as many as 18 independent variables. This invention arose from previous work performed by Herbert R. Stewart, one of Bush's master's students, who at Bush's suggestion created
4720-479: The Army on board, Bush moved to streamline oversight of the project by the OSRD, replacing the Section ;S-1 with a new S-1 Executive Committee. A week later, on June 23, President Roosevelt sent this one-sentence memo back to Bush: "Do you have the money?" Bush soon became dissatisfied with the dilatory way the project was run, with its indecisiveness over the selection of sites for the pilot plants. He
4838-724: The Coupled Circuit and the Artificial Transmission Line , in April 1916. His adviser, Arthur Edwin Kennelly , demanded more work from him, but Bush refused, and Kennelly was overruled by the department chairman. Bush received his doctorate in engineering jointly from MIT and Harvard University . He married Phoebe in August 1916. They had two sons: Richard Davis Bush and John Hathaway Bush. Bush accepted
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4956-824: The French L'Etablissement Central de l'Aérostation Militaire in Meudon (now Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales ), the German Aerodynamic Laboratory of the University of Göttingen , and the Russian Aerodynamic Institute of Koutchino (replaced in 1918 with the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) , which is still in existence). The most influential agency upon which
5074-594: The Germans would be unable to copy and produce it before the war was over. Eventually, the Joint Chiefs agreed to allow its employment from December 25. In response to the German Ardennes Offensive on December 16, 1944, the immediate use of the proximity fuze was authorized, and it went into action with deadly effect. By the end of 1944, proximity fuzes were coming off the production lines at
5192-408: The July 1945 issue of The Atlantic . A few months later, Life magazine published a condensed version of "As We May Think", accompanied by several illustrations showing the possible appearance of a memex machine and its companion devices. Shortly after "As We May Think" was originally published, Douglas Engelbart read it, and with Bush's visions in mind, commenced work that would later lead to
5310-610: The NACA was based was the British Advisory Committee for Aeronautics . In December 1912, President William Howard Taft had appointed a National Aerodynamical Laboratory Commission chaired by Robert S. Woodward , president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington . Legislation was introduced in both houses of Congress early in January 1913 to approve the commission, but when it came to a vote,
5428-462: The NACA, with George J. Mead as his deputy. Bush remained a member of the NACA until November 1948. During World War I, Bush had become aware of poor cooperation between civilian scientists and the military. Concerned about the lack of coordination in scientific research and the requirements of defense mobilization, Bush proposed the creation of a general directive agency in the federal government , which he discussed with his colleagues. He had
5546-412: The NDRC began work on a proximity fuze , a fuze inside an artillery shell that would explode when it came close to its target. A radar set, along with the batteries to power it, was miniaturized to fit inside a shell, and its glass vacuum tubes designed to withstand the 20,000 g-force of being fired from a gun and 500 rotations per second in flight. Unlike normal radar, the proximity fuze sent out
5664-656: The NDRC: Karl Taylor Compton (president of MIT), James B. Conant (president of Harvard University), Frank B. Jewett (president of the National Academy of Sciences and chairman of the Board of Directors of Bell Laboratories), and Richard C. Tolman (dean of the graduate school at Caltech); Rear Admiral Harold G. Bowen, Sr. and Brigadier General George V. Strong represented the military. The civilians already knew each other well, which allowed
5782-643: The Naval Appropriations Bill. According to one source, "The enabling legislation for the NACA slipped through almost unnoticed as a rider attached to the Naval Appropriation Bill, on March 3, 1915." The committee of 12 people, all unpaid, were allocated a budget of $ 5,000 per year. President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law the same day, thus formally creating the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, as it
5900-404: The Navy had convinced him that it would not listen to his advice, and could not handle large-scale construction projects. In March 1942, Bush sent a report to Roosevelt outlining work by Robert Oppenheimer on the nuclear cross section of uranium-235 . Oppenheimer's calculations, which Bush had George Kistiakowsky check, estimated that the critical mass of a sphere of Uranium-235 was in
6018-417: The OSRD while Conant succeeded him as chairman of the NDRC, which was subsumed into the OSRD. The OSRD was on a firmer financial footing than the NDRC since it received funding from Congress, and had the resources and the authority to develop weapons and technologies with or without the military. Furthermore, the OSRD had a broader mandate than the NDRC, moving into additional areas such as medical research and
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#17327721669146136-494: The OSRD, and Parsons in charge. The research effort remained under Tuve but moved to the Johns Hopkins University 's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), where Parsons was BuOrd's representative. In August 1942, a live firing test was conducted with the newly commissioned cruiser USS Cleveland ; three pilotless drones were shot down in succession. To preserve the secret of the proximity fuze, its use
6254-486: The OSRD. Bush felt that basic research was important to national survival for both military and commercial reasons, requiring continued government support for science and technology; technical superiority could be a deterrent to future enemy aggression. In Science, The Endless Frontier , a July 1945 report to the president, Bush maintained that basic research was "the pacemaker of technological progress". "New products and new processes do not appear full-grown," Bush wrote in
6372-693: The P-38 Lightning. The X-1 program was first envisioned in 1944 when a former NACA engineer working for Bell Aircraft approached the Army for funding of a supersonic test aircraft. Neither the Army nor Bell had any experience in this area, so the majority of research came from the NACA Compressibility Research Division, which had been operating for more than a year by the time Bell began conceptual designs. The Compressibility Research Division also had years of additional research and data to pull from, as its head engineer
6490-415: The President to sanction the creation of NASA. He wrote that a civil space program should be based on a "strengthened and redesignated" NACA, indicating that NACA was a "going Federal research agency" with 7,500 employees and $ 300 million worth of facilities, which could expand its research program "with a minimum of delay". As of their meeting on May 26, 1958, committee members, starting clockwise from
6608-520: The Second World War. Nearly every aircraft used some form of forced induction that relied on information developed by NACA. Because of this, U.S.-produced aircraft had a significant power advantage above 15,000 feet, which was never fully countered by Axis forces. After the war had begun, the British government sent a request to North American Aviation for a new fighter. The offered P-40 Tomahawk fighters were considered too outdated to be
6726-595: The Special Committee on Space Technology. The committee, also called the Stever Committee after its chairman, Guyford Stever , was a special steering committee that was formed with the mandate to coordinate various branches of the federal government, private companies as well as universities within the United States with NACA's objectives and also harness their expertise in order to develop a space program. Wernher von Braun , technical director at
6844-545: The Summer of 1940 would have been the greatest calamity for America, the President is first, and Dr. Bush would be second or third." Bush was fond of saying that "if he made any important contribution to the war effort at all, it would be to get the Army and Navy to tell each other what they were doing." He established a cordial relationship with Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson , and Stimson's assistant, Harvey H. Bundy , who found Bush "impatient" and "vain", but said he
6962-579: The V-1, the V-2 or the Henschel Hs 293 air-to-ship gliding guided bomb. Although the United States trailed the Germans and Japanese in several areas, this represented an entire field that had been left to the enemy. Bush did not seek the advice of Robert H. Goddard . Goddard would come to be regarded as America's pioneer of rocketry, but many contemporaries regarded him as a crank. Before the war, Bush had gone on
7080-519: The activities of some six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare. Bush was a well-known policymaker and public intellectual during World War II, when he was in effect the first presidential science advisor . As head of NDRC and OSRD, he initiated the Manhattan Project, and ensured that it received top priority from the highest levels of government. In Science, The Endless Frontier , his 1945 report to
7198-404: The advancement of knowledge in the United States, a departure that came to govern Federal science policy after World War II." National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics ( NACA ) was a United States federal agency that was founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958,
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#17327721669147316-449: The agency was dissolved and its assets and personnel were transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NACA is an initialism, i.e., pronounced as individual letters, rather than as a whole word (as was NASA during the early years after being established). Among other advancements, NACA research and development produced the NACA duct , a type of air intake used in modern automotive applications,
7434-406: The aircraft. NACA ran the experiments and data collection, and the bulk of the research used to develop the aircraft came from NACA engineer John Stack , the head of NACA's compressibility division. Compressibility is a major issue as aircraft approach Mach 1, and research into solving the problem drew heavily on information collected during previous NACA wind tunnel testing to assist Lockheed with
7552-487: The analytical engine, Shannon described the application of Boolean algebra to electronic circuits in his landmark master's thesis, A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits . In 1935, Bush was approached by OP-20-G , which was searching for an electronic device to aid in codebreaking . Bush was paid a $ 10,000 fee to design the Rapid Analytical Machine (RAM). The project went over budget and
7670-617: The area rule. (Aircraft so altered were known as "area ruled" aircraft.) The design changes allowed the aircraft to exceed Mach 1, but only by a small margin, as the rest of the Convair design was not optimized for this. As the F-11F was the first design to incorporate this during initial design, it was able to break the sound barrier without having to use afterburner. Because the area rule was initially classified, it took several years for Whitcomb to be recognized for his accomplishment. In 1955 he
7788-468: The army, and Rear Admiral William R. Purnell representing the navy. At the meeting with Roosevelt on October 9, 1941, Bush advocated cooperating with the United Kingdom, and he began corresponding with his British counterpart, Sir John Anderson . But by October 1942, Conant and Bush agreed that a joint project would pose security risks and be more complicated to manage. Roosevelt approved
7906-525: The atomic program. To control it, he created a Top Policy Group consisting of himself—although he never attended a meeting—Wallace, Bush, Conant, Stimson and the Chief of Staff of the Army , General George Marshall . On Bush's advice, Roosevelt chose the army to run the project rather than the navy, although the navy had shown far more interest in the field, and was already conducting research into atomic energy for powering ships. Bush's negative experiences with
8024-613: The board, and with his predecessor, John Merriam, who continued to offer unwanted advice. A major embarrassment to them all was Harry H. Laughlin , the head of the Eugenics Record Office , whose activities Merriam had attempted to curtail without success. Bush made it a priority to remove him, regarding him as a scientific fraud, and one of his first acts was to ask for a review of Laughlin's work. In June 1938, Bush asked Laughlin to retire, offering him an annuity, which Laughlin reluctantly accepted. The Eugenics Record Office
8142-406: The company that became the Raytheon Company in 1922. Bush became vice president of MIT and dean of the MIT School of Engineering in 1932, and president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1938. During his career, Bush patented a string of his own inventions. He is known particularly for his engineering work on analog computers , and for the memex . Starting in 1927, Bush constructed
8260-402: The company's fortunes by developing a thermostatic switch invented by Al Spencer, an AMRAD technician, on his own time. AMRAD's management was not interested in the device, but had no objection to its sale. Bush found backing from Laurence K. Marshall and Richard S. Aldrich to create the Spencer Thermostat Company, which hired Bush as a consultant. The new company soon had revenues in excess of
8378-632: The confidence of the military, which distrusted the ability of civilians to observe security regulations and devise practical solutions, and opposing conscription of young scientists into the armed forces. This became especially difficult as the army's manpower crisis really began to bite in 1944. In all, the OSRD requested deferments for some 9,725 employees of OSRD contractors, of which all but 63 were granted. In his obituary, The New York Times described Bush as "a master craftsman at steering around obstacles, whether they were technical or political or bull-headed generals and admirals." In August 1940,
8496-447: The demand of a common cause, have shared greatly and learned much. It has been exhilarating to work in effective partnership." Bush introduced the concept of the memex during the 1930s, which he imagined as a form of memory augmentation involving a microfilm -based "device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It
8614-816: The differential analyzer, Bush was awarded the Franklin Institute 's Louis E. Levy Medal in 1928. Bush taught Boolean algebra , circuit theory , and operational calculus according to the methods of Oliver Heaviside while Samuel Wesley Stratton was President of MIT. When Harold Jeffreys in Cambridge, England, offered his mathematical treatment in Operational Methods in Mathematical Physics (1927), Bush responded with his seminal textbook Operational Circuit Analysis (1929) for instructing electrical engineering students. In
8732-399: The early 1920s, it had adopted a new and more ambitious mission: to promote military and civilian aviation through applied research that looked beyond current needs. NACA researchers pursued this mission through the agency's impressive collection of in-house wind tunnels, engine test stands, and flight test facilities. Commercial and military clients were also permitted to use NACA facilities on
8850-413: The end of the Second World War, Bush and Conant had foreseen and sought to avoid a possible nuclear arms race . Bush proposed international scientific openness and information sharing as a method of self-regulation for the scientific community, to prevent any one political group gaining a scientific advantage. Before nuclear research became public knowledge, Bush used the development of biological weapons as
8968-517: The existing Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory . The California location was chosen for its proximity to some of the largest aviation corporations. This decision was supported by the chief of the United States Army Air Corps , Major General Henry H. Arnold , and by the head of the navy's Bureau of Aeronautics , Rear Admiral Arthur B. Cook , who between them were planning to spend $ 225 million on new aircraft in
9086-401: The field back many years in the United States. He saw little value in the humanities and social sciences , and slashed funding for Isis , a journal dedicated to the history of science and technology and its cultural influence. Bush later explained that "I have a great reservation about these studies where somebody goes out and interviews a bunch of people and reads a lot of stuff and writes
9204-460: The first general-purpose electronic computer. Having delayed its funding, Bush's prediction proved correct as ENIAC was not completed until December 1945, after the war had ended. His critics saw his attitude as a failure of vision. On June 28, 1941, Roosevelt established the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) with the signing of Executive Order 8807. Bush became director of
9322-488: The football team. He became a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, and dated Phoebe Clara Davis, who also came from Chelsea. Tufts allowed students to gain a master's degree in four years simultaneously with a bachelor's degree . For his master's thesis, Bush invented and patented a "profile tracer". This was a mapping device for assisting surveyors that looked like a lawn mower. It had two bicycle wheels, and
9440-416: The integraph, a device for solving first-order differential equations , in 1925. Another student, Harold Hazen , proposed extending the device to handle second-order differential equations . Bush immediately realized the potential of such an invention, for these were much more difficult to solve, but also quite common in physics. Under Bush's supervision, Hazen was able to construct the differential analyzer,
9558-404: The invention of the mouse . Ted Nelson , who coined the terms " hypertext " and " hypermedia ", was also greatly influenced by Bush's essay. "As We May Think" has turned out to be a visionary and influential essay. In their introduction to a paper discussing information literacy as a discipline, Bill Johnston and Sheila Webber wrote in 2005 that: Bush's paper might be regarded as describing
9676-491: The legislation was defeated. Charles D. Walcott , secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1907 to 1927, took up the effort, and in January 1915, Senator Benjamin R. Tillman , and Representative Ernest W. Roberts introduced identical resolutions recommending the creation of an advisory committee as outlined by Walcott. The purpose of the committee was "to supervise and direct the scientific study of
9794-452: The mandate of the OSRD as narrowly as possible to avoid overtaxing his office and to prevent duplicating the efforts of other agencies. Bush would often ask: "Will it help to win a war; this war?" Other challenges involved obtaining adequate funds from the president and Congress and determining apportionment of research among government, academic, and industrial facilities. His most difficult problems, and also greatest successes, were keeping
9912-458: The mass production of penicillin and sulfa drugs . The organization grew to 850 full-time employees, and produced between 30,000 and 35,000 reports. The OSRD was involved in some 2,500 contracts, worth in excess of $ 536 million. Bush's method of management at the OSRD was to direct overall policy, while delegating supervision of divisions to qualified colleagues and letting them do their jobs without interference. He attempted to interpret
10030-463: The matter and overruled NACA objections to higher air speeds. NACA built a handful of new high-speed wind tunnels, and Mach 0.75 (570 mph (495 kn; 917 km/h)) was reached at Moffett's 16-foot (4.9 m) wind tunnel late in 1942. NACA's first wind tunnel was formally dedicated at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory on June 11, 1920. It was the first of many now-famous NACA and NASA wind tunnels. Although this specific wind tunnel
10148-524: The meeting, Churchill forcefully pressed for a renewal of interchange, while Bush defended current policy. Only when he returned to Washington did he discover that Roosevelt had agreed with the British. The Quebec Agreement merged the two atomic bomb projects, creating the Combined Policy Committee with Stimson, Bush and Conant as United States representatives. Bush appeared on the cover of Time magazine on April 3, 1944. He toured
10266-582: The new president, Harry S. Truman , on nuclear weapons. It advised that the atomic bomb should be used against an industrial target in Japan as soon as possible and without warning. Bush was present at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range on July 16, 1945, for the Trinity nuclear test , the first detonation of an atomic bomb. Afterwards, he took his hat off to Oppenheimer in tribute. Before
10384-470: The organization to begin functioning immediately. The NDRC established itself in the administration building at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Each member of the committee was assigned an area of responsibility, while Bush handled coordination. A small number of projects reported to him directly, such as the S-1 Section . Compton's deputy, Alfred Loomis , said that "of the men whose death in
10502-710: The other hand, NACA's 1941 refusal to increase airspeed in their wind tunnels set Lockheed back a year in their quest to solve the problem of compressibility encountered in high speed dives made by the Lockheed P-38 Lightning . The full-size 30-by-60-foot (9.1 m × 18.3 m) Langley wind tunnel operated at no more than 100 mph (87 kn; 160 km/h) and the then-recent 7-by-10-foot (2.1 m × 3.0 m) tunnels at Moffett could only reach 250 mph (220 kn; 400 km/h). These were speeds Lockheed engineers considered useless for their purposes. General Henry H. Arnold took up
10620-410: The preface he wrote: I write as an engineer and do not pretend to be a mathematician. I lean for support, and expect always to lean, upon the mathematician, just as I must lean upon the chemist, the physician, or the lawyer. Norbert Wiener has patiently guided me around many a mathematical pitfall ... he has written an appendix to this text on certain mathematical points. I did not know an engineer and
10738-605: The president of the United States, Bush called for an expansion of government support for science, and he pressed for the creation of the National Science Foundation . Vannevar Bush was born in Everett, Massachusetts , on March 11, 1890. He was the third child and only son of Richard Perry Bush, the local Universalist pastor, and his wife Emma Linwood (née Paine), the daughter of a prominent Provincetown family. He had two older sisters, Edith and Reba. He
10856-474: The problems of flight with a view to their practical solution, and to determine the problems which should be experimentally attacked and to discuss their solution and their application to practical questions". Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote that he "heartily [endorsed] the principle" on which the legislation was based. Walcott suggested the tactic of adding the resolution to
10974-599: The proposed site at Oak Ridge, Tennessee , and obtained a AAA priority. At a meeting in Stimson's office on September 23 attended by Bundy, Bush, Conant, Groves, Marshall Somervell and Stimson, Bush put forward his proposal for steering the project by a small committee answerable to the Top Policy Group. The meeting agreed with Bush, and created a Military Policy Committee chaired by him, with Somervell's chief of staff, Brigadier General Wilhelm D. Styer , representing
11092-407: The range of 2.5 to 5 kilograms, with a destructive power of around 2,000 tons of TNT. Moreover, it appeared that plutonium might be even more fissile . After conferring with Brigadier General Lucius D. Clay about the construction requirements, Bush drew up a submission for $ 85 million in fiscal year 1943 for four pilot plants, which he forwarded to Roosevelt on June 17, 1942. With
11210-456: The rate of 40,000 per day. "If one looks at the proximity fuze program as a whole," historian James Phinney Baxter III wrote, "the magnitude and complexity of the effort rank it among the three or four most extraordinary scientific achievements of the war." The German V-1 flying bomb demonstrated a serious omission in OSRD's portfolio: guided missiles. While the OSRD had some success developing unguided rockets, it had nothing comparable to
11328-448: The record as saying, "I don't understand how a serious scientist or engineer can play around with rockets", but in May 1944, he was forced to travel to London to warn General Dwight Eisenhower of the danger posed by the V-1 and V-2. Bush could only recommend that the launch sites be bombed, which was done. Bush played a critical role in persuading the United States government to undertake
11446-426: The report. "They are founded on new principles and new conceptions, which in turn are painstakingly developed by research in the purest realms of science!" In Bush's view, the "purest realms" were the physical and medical sciences; he did not propose funding the social sciences . In Science, The Endless Frontier , science historian Daniel Kevles later wrote, Bush "insisted upon the principle of Federal patronage for
11564-429: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Endless Frontier . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Endless_Frontier&oldid=1027768017 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
11682-405: The secretary of NACA prepare a draft of the proposed National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) to be presented to Congress, but after the Germans invaded France in May 1940, Bush decided speed was important and approached President Franklin D. Roosevelt directly. Through the President's uncle, Frederic Delano , Bush managed to set up a meeting with Roosevelt on June 12, 1940, to which he brought
11800-539: The time. Bush preferred to quit rather than study a subject that did not interest him. Bush subsequently enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) electrical engineering program. Spurred by the need for enough financial security to marry, he submitted his thesis, entitled Oscillating-Current Circuits: An Extension of the Theory of Generalized Angular Velocities, with Applications to
11918-740: The war period; Bush was calling for its closure even before the war had ended. During the war, the OSRD had issued contracts as it had seen fit, with just eight organizations accounting for half of its spending. MIT was the largest to receive funds, with its obvious ties to Bush and his close associates. Efforts to obtain legislation exempting the OSRD from the usual government conflict of interest regulations failed, leaving Bush and other OSRD principals open to prosecution. Bush therefore pressed for OSRD to be wound up as soon as possible. With its dissolution, Bush and others had hoped that an equivalent peacetime government research and development agency would replace
12036-540: The war, Bowen would again try to create a rival to the NDRC inside the navy. On August 31, 1940, Bush met with Henry Tizard , and arranged a series of meetings between the NDRC and the Tizard Mission , a British scientific delegation. At a meeting On September 19, 1940, the Americans described Loomis and Compton's microwave research. They had an experimental 10 cm wavelength short wave radar, but admitted that it did not have enough power and that they were at
12154-538: The world better in the years before and after World War II. In May 1938, Bush accepted a prestigious appointment as president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW), which had been founded in Washington, D.C. Also known as the Carnegie Institution for Science, it had an endowment of $ 33 million, and annually spent $ 1.5 million in research, most of which was carried out at its eight major laboratories. Bush became its president on January 1, 1939, with
12272-559: The year ahead. However, Congress was not convinced of its value, and Bush had to appear before the Senate Appropriations Committee on April 5, 1939. It was a frustrating experience for Bush, since he had never appeared before Congress before, and the senators were not swayed by his arguments. Further lobbying was required before funding for the new center, now known as the Ames Research Center ,
12390-739: Was "one of the most important, able men I ever knew". Bush's relationship with the navy was more turbulent. Bowen, the director of the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), saw the NDRC as a bureaucratic rival, and recommended abolishing it. A series of bureaucratic battles ended with the NRL placed under the Bureau of Ships , and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox placing an unsatisfactory fitness report in Bowen's personnel file. After
12508-572: Was a hypothetical adjustable microfilm viewer with a structure analogous to that of hypertext . The memex and Bush's 1945 essay " As We May Think " influenced generations of computer scientists, who drew inspiration from his vision of the future. Bush was appointed to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1938, and soon became its chairman. As chairman of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), and later director of OSRD, Bush coordinated
12626-697: Was awarded the Collier Trophy for his work on both the Tiger and the F-102. The most important design resulting from the area rule was the B-58 Hustler , which was already in development at the time. It was redesigned to take the area rule into effect, allowing greatly improved performance. This was the first US supersonic bomber, and was capable of Mach 2 at a time when Soviet fighters had only just attained that speed months earlier. The area rule concept
12744-450: Was called in the legislation, on the last day of the 63rd Congress . The act of Congress creating NACA, approved March 3, 1915, reads, "...It shall be the duty of the advisory committee for aeronautics to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution. ... " On January 29, 1920, President Wilson appointed pioneering flier and aviation engineer Orville Wright to NACA's board. By
12862-530: Was carried out, including important developments in radar and the initiation and early administration of the Manhattan Project . He emphasized the importance of scientific research to national security and economic well-being, and was chiefly responsible for the movement that led to the creation of the National Science Foundation . Bush joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1919, and founded
12980-455: Was changed to the Section S-1. Bush met with Roosevelt and Vice President Henry A. Wallace on October 9, 1941, to discuss the project. He briefed Roosevelt on Tube Alloys , the British atomic bomb project and its Maud Committee , which had concluded that an atomic bomb was feasible, and on the German nuclear energy project , about which little was known. Roosevelt approved and expedited
13098-795: Was finally approved. By this time, war had broken out in Europe, and the inferiority of American aircraft engines was apparent, in particular the Allison V-1710 which performed poorly at high altitudes and had to be removed from the P-51 Mustang in favor of the British Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. The NACA asked for funding to build a third center in Ohio, which became the Glenn Research Center . Following Ames's retirement in October 1939, Bush became chairman of
13216-566: Was initially permitted only over water, where a dud round could not fall into enemy hands. In late 1943, the Army obtained permission to use the weapon over land. The proximity fuze proved particularly effective against the V-1 flying bomb over England, and later Antwerp , in 1944. A version was also developed for use with howitzers against ground targets. Bush met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October 1944 to press for its use, arguing that
13334-420: Was named after John Vannevar, an old friend of the family who had attended Tufts College with Perry. The family moved to Chelsea, Massachusetts , in 1892, and Bush graduated from Chelsea High School in 1909. He then attended Tufts College , like his father before him. A popular student, he was vice president of his sophomore class, and president of his junior class. During his senior year, he managed
13452-415: Was not delivered until 1938, when it was found to be unreliable in service. Nonetheless, it was an important step toward creating such a device. The reform of MIT's administration began in 1930, with the appointment of Karl T. Compton as president. Bush and Compton soon clashed over the issue of limiting the amount of outside consultancy by professors, a battle Bush quickly lost, but the two men soon built
13570-430: Was not unique or advanced, it enabled NACA engineers and scientists to develop and test new and advanced concepts in aerodynamics and to improve future wind tunnel design. In the years immediately preceding World War II, NACA was involved in the development of several designs that served key roles in the war effort. When engineers at a major engine manufacturer were having issues producing superchargers that would allow
13688-498: Was particularly disturbed at the allocation of an AA-3 priority, which would delay completion of the pilot plants by three months. Bush complained about these problems to Bundy and Under Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson . Major General Brehon B. Somervell , the commander of the army's Services of Supply , appointed Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves as project director in September. Within days of taking over, Groves approved
13806-514: Was previously head of the high speed wind tunnel division, which itself had nearly a decade of high speed test data by that time. Due to the importance of NACA involvement, Stack was personally awarded the Collier Trophy along with the owner of Bell Aircraft and test pilot Chuck Yeager. In 1951, NACA Engineer Richard Whitcomb determined the area rule that explained transonic flow over an aircraft. The first uses of this theory were on
13924-568: Was renamed the Genetics Record Office, its funding was drastically cut, and it was closed completely in 1944. Senator Robert Reynolds attempted to get Laughlin reinstated, but Bush informed the trustees that an inquiry into Laughlin would "show him to be physically incapable of directing an office, and an investigation of his scientific standing would be equally conclusive." Bush wanted the institute to concentrate on hard science . He gutted Carnegie's archeology program, setting
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