Bush, Vannevar

Vannevar Bush

Born March 11, 1890

Everett, Massachusetts

Died June 28, 1974

Belmont, Massachusetts

Physicist, electrical research engineer, inventor, science administrator

A brilliant visionary with his sights always set to the future, engineer and mathematician Vannevar Bush guided much of the rapid-paced scientific research and development of U.S. weapons used to win World War II (1939–45). As a leading scientific advisor to the federal government in the 1940s, he revolutionized the interaction and cooperation between the science community, industry, and government. In doing so, Bush charted a new course in the way science research and its eventual application was carried out in the United States. Additionally, by the start of the twenty-first century, the innovative Bush was widely regarded as the "godfather" of the computer age. By 1945 he had conceptualized a machine he dubbed the "memex" that would follow pathways of stored information to greatly enhance human access to knowledge.

A highly gifted young man

Vannevar Bush was born on March 11, 1890, in Everett, Massachusetts, to Richard Perry Bush and Emma Linwood Paine. Although Vannevar's father was a Universalist minister, his family tree was peppered with self-confident sea captains accustomed to being in command. Bush attributed his determination to "run the ship" to the influence of his grandfather, a whaling skipper.

Bush was raised in comfortable but modest surroundings in Chelsea, Massachusetts. A stellar student exhibiting considerable talent in math and physics, Bush graduated from Tufts University in 1913 with both a B.S. and M.S. While at Tufts, Bush studied the concepts of electrical engineering that fed his inclination to tinker with scientific ideas until he had invented some practical device. An early invention was a hand-pushed machine that looked like a lawn mower but was a land survey machine that could determine elevations and draw a rough map for the operator. As a young college student, Bush had not yet gathered the people and political skills it would take to effectively market his device. But he learned from experience and by the 1930s and 1940s, Bush would be a master administrator coordinating scientists, and business, military, and government leaders in the development of products to win World War II.

Within one year, 1915, Bush completed a doctorate of engineering program administered through Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard. Bush married Phoebe Davis in 1916 and they had two sons. Both boys would serve in the military during World War II—one was an army lieutenant, the other an aviation cadet. That same year, Bush returned to Tufts as an assistant professor. In 1917, eager to aid the World War I (1914–18) effort, he was instrumental in developing an electromagnetic locator to find submarines, only to see it deployed incorrectly and never useful in battle. This experience further pushed Bush to acquire the political and networking skills to assure his intellect and inventions were given due credit.

Scientific theory to practical use

In 1919 Bush joined the electrical engineering department of MIT as an associate professor. By 1923 he was a full professor, and head of both graduate studies and the electrical engineering research department. Continuing his meteoric rise, he soon became vice president of MIT and dean of the college of engineering. During the 1920s and 1930s he invented and built with the help of his students a machine called the differential analyzer, run mechanically by large gears to solve mathematical equations. He also wished to build an automatic machine that would go beyond mathematic equations to store the rapidly expanding information base accumulating at universities. To this end he worked with microfilm as a way to store and retrieve information. Bush's early "computers" would be used extensively before and during World War II to work through many science and engineering problems. In 1934 Bush was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, whose membership comprised the most elite scientists in the United States. During this same time period Bush held an intense interest in working with industry to turn theoretical knowledge into practical application. He concerned himself with patent rights (the exclusive right to manufacture, use, or sell a device) and served on the Science Advisory Board's Committee on the National Relation of the Patent System to the Stimulation of New Industries. Working closely with industry, he helped devise a thermostat whose development ultimately ended up as a basis for the company Texas Instruments. He also developed a gas rectifier (a gaseous tube to convert current for use in radios) so that radios were no longer dependent on batteries. Raytheon Corporation grew from this invention.

In 1937 Bush was well positioned to leave MIT and become president of Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW). The prestigious CIW was a grouping of well-financed research institutions. At CIW Bush would influence and advise the direction of scientific research in the United States. The war heating up in Europe influenced Bush's thinking on the mobilization of research to aid development of technologies to win the war for the Allied powers (Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union).

Office of Scientific Research and Development

In 1940 Bush convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45; see entry) that the United States needed a functioning committee bringing together scientific, industry, military, and government leaders. The committee would coordinate development of war weapons and technologies vital to helping Great Britain and other nations fighting the military expansion of Nazi Germany. (The United States would not enter the war until December 1941, but it was supplying materials and technology to those nations who were already engaged in the fight.) President Roosevelt revived the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), first conceived in World War I, put Bush in charge, and gave him direct access to the White House and emergency funding. By mid-1941 a new larger agency, the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), was established and funded by congressional appropriations. The OSRD pulled NDRC, and the new Committee on Medical Research (CMR), under its umbrella. Bush became the OSRD's director, making OSRD completely under civilian control, not under military or governmental control. Bush believed existing government agencies and the military were moving much too slow in research and development. Being highly flexible and able to initiate work rapidly, OSRD began awarding government contracts to the universities and industrial businesses Bush believed were best able to deliver on various projects. Universities receiving contracts included California Institute of Technology (Caltech), University of Chicago, CIW, Columbia University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, and MIT. Companies included Western Electric and Bell Laboratories, General Motors, Westinghouse, Sperry, Philco, Sylvania, Studebaker, Standard Oil, Dupont, and General Electric. Bush arranged for key scientific personnel in the universities, industries, and government to receive draft deferments. Bush's civilian army of top U.S. scientists was approximately six thousand strong. OSRD also worked with essentially all of the army's and navy's research laboratories.

The OSRD limited its scope to the research and development of devices for the military. Bush left project testing, manufacturing, and delivery to the businesses and the military branches. Inevitably, controversies arose over which university and business got what, and between the military and scientists. Nevertheless, Bush used his considerable administrative skills to speed scientific findings into the practical hands of manufacturers and then to the military for their use.

Two major developments credited to OSRD guidance were in radar and the proximity fuse. Although Bush wanted to use existing facilities, a few new facilities were established. The Radiation Laboratory was created at MIT and developed superior radar systems manufactured by Sperry, Westinghouse, Philco, and Bell Labs.

Charles F. Kettering—"Dean of Inventors"

Charles F. Kettering (1876–1958), often referred to as the "Dean of Inventors," graduated from Ohio State University in 1904. He first worked for the National Cash Register Company, where he developed the electric cash register.

Forming Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (Delco) in 1909, he developed the electric automobile starter that was first used by Cadillac in 1912. While running Delco he also invented the "Delco," a fuel-driven generator that electrified farms decades before power lines reached rural America. In 1916 Kettering sold his thriving business to General Motors (GM) and joined the staff. Overseeing its research facilities, Kettering remained at GM for thirty-one years. In 1927 he founded the Charles F. Kettering Foundation for research to benefit mankind.

During World War II (1939–45), "Boss Ket" headed the National Inventors Council that examined new inventions sent to the government. He also had a regular Sunday afternoon radio program that was listened to by millions of Americans. "Horsepower is war power" is the slogan he used on the program, as related in the December 1944 issue of The National Geographic Magazine in the article "Michigan Fights." A few other Kettering inventions included spark plugs, Freon for electric refrigerators, quick-drying automobile paint, automatic transmission, the first lightweight diesel locomotive engine, and the first synthetic aviation fuel. At the close of the war in 1945, Kettering, along with Alfred Sloan (1875–1966), founded the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. Located in New York City, it remained at the beginning of the twenty-first century a premier cancer research and treatment center.

At his death in 1958, Kettering held roughly 140 patents and had been presented honorary doctorate degrees by about thirty universities.

The proximity fuse is often credited with turning, then winning, the war for the Allies. The proximity fuse was a detonation device for setting off rockets, bombs, and later, torpedoes. The small fuse was guided by radar and was highly accurate in finding its target. It was first used in battle in January 1943. Manufactured by Sylvania, the fuse was developed

through the Applied Physics Laboratory, Section T, at Johns Hopkins University with U.S. Navy procurement contracts. The fuse developed was a classic example of university, industry, and military cooperation. Other devices developed and manufactured through OSRD facilitation were underwater sonar used in antisubmarine warfare, amphibious landing vehicles, mine detectors, flame throwers, the bazooka rocket, other rockets, torpedoes, and chemical warfare products. Medical advances included the drug atabrine for treating malaria, DDT to kill disease-carrying insects, plasma transfusions, and psychiatric programs to deal with those traumatized by war.

Bush and the MIT Radiation Lab also became heavily involved in the Manhattan Project, the U.S. project to develop an atomic bomb. Ultimately Bush handed OSRD's involvement in nuclear development to the Army Corps of Engineers, but he and other OSRD scientists still oversaw much of the research.

Beginning of the National Science Foundation

As the war wound down, Bush had no political interest in establishing postwar government or military policies. However, he adamantly urged President Roosevelt by late 1944 and early 1945 to establish federal support for practical research in health and national security. Bush wanted to disband OSRD, since it had been widely funded by emergency war monies, and establish a permanent research foundation that he called the National Research Foundation.

After considerable wrangling over control and funding, Congress, in 1950, finally passed legislation that President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972; served 1945–53) signed. The name of the new foundation would be the National Science Foundation (NSF). It had a tiny budget as health funds went to the expanding National Institutes of Health and national security funds went to the military. Only after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first satellite, in 1957 did the NSF become a major scientific research player. It then grew into one of the chief supporters of U.S. scientific endeavors throughout the rest of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century.

Never slowed down

Meanwhile, in 1945 Bush published his article "As We May Think" in the magazine the Atlantic Monthly. Based on his visionary research on computerlike devices in the 1920s and 1930s, he described a theoretical device called a "memex" that would enhance human thought and hence research. In this article, Bush is credited with putting forth the first early thoughts on automation of the human thought processes or computerization.

Bush also headed the Research and Development Board from 1946 to 1949. He labored to untangle competing military rivalries and develop an economic and rational way for the nation to carry out national defense research. Bush resigned his post and returned to CIW in 1949. He also supported J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist known as the father of the atomic bomb, when he came under congressional investigation for alleged leaks to the Soviet Union. Both Bush and Oppenheimer vigorously opposed the development and testing of a hydrogen bomb.

In 1955 Bush retired from CIW. He served as trustee and on the boards of directors of various large corporations. He also continued his research in storing information, both for libraries and as learning enhancers. The use of microfilm continued as one of his chief interests. Bush died in Belmont, Massachusetts, in 1974. He had revolutionized the way universities, private industry, and government worked together in scientific research and development. The military-industrial-university complex that developed after World War II was largely based on examples set by the operations of Bush's OSRD.

For More Information

Books

Baxter, James P. Scientists Against Time. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968.

Buderi, Robert. The Invention that Changed the World: How a Small Group of Radar Pioneers Won the Second World War and Launched a Technological Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

Burke, Colin B. Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1994.

Conant, Jennet. Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science that Changed the Course of World War II. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002.

Zachary, G. Pascal. Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century. New York: Free Press, 1997.

Periodicals

"Yankee Scientist." Time (April 3, 1944), pp. 52–57.

Klemmer, Harvey. "Michigan Fights." The National Geographic Magazine (December 1944), pp. 676–715.

Web sites

Hall of Fame, Inventor Profile: Charles Franklin Kettering. http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/86.html (accessed on July 18, 2004).

Internet Pioneers: Vannevar Bush. http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/bush.html (accessed on July 18, 2004).

Kettering Foundation. http://www.kettering.org/History/history.html (accessed on July 18, 2004).

Office of Scientific Research and Development. http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/OSRD.html (accessed on July 18, 2004).