due to threatening German submarine warfare. 

 Secretary of the Navy Daniels appointed a Naval 

 Consulting Board under the chairmanship of 

 Thomas A. Edison. The Board projected a very 

 extensive national program but in 1915 this country 

 did not have the scientific and technological base 

 to sustain such an effort. As a first step to improve 

 the situation, the Board proposed the creation of a 

 naval research laboratory and succeeded in getting 

 it authorized with a $1 million appropriation to 

 start it. However, before the laboratory could be 

 built, the United States entered the war. Research 

 was done at existing naval facilities; the new labo- 

 ratory, which later became NRL, was postponed 

 until 192.'^. 73 



The Council of National Defense requested the 

 National Research Council (NRC) to act as its 

 department of research, and appointed the Naval 

 Consulting Board as its board of inventions.'''! 

 Reviewing new inventions became the major ac- 

 tivity of the Board. Of 110,000 suggestions only 

 10 had enough merit for detailed examination and 

 only one was produced. It was apparent that, "in 

 time of total war, random ingenuity is no alterna- 

 tive to the problem approach by teams of highly 

 trained men thoroughly aware of both scientific 

 theory and the needs of the services. ""75 



When the Naval Consulting Board and the NRC 

 started independently to work on acoustic detec- 

 tion of submarines, even before we entered the 

 war, almost immediately the Secretary of the 

 Navy created a coordinating committee. Under 

 the ensuing program, industry set up an experi- 

 mental station at Nahant, Mass., and university 

 scientists set up one at New London, Conn. 

 Crude passive direction-finding equipment of sev- 

 eral varieties came out of these groups. 76 



From the nature of these devices it does not 

 appear that any basic research was involved, but 

 the New London group was certainly capable of 

 doing good basic research and did so later. The 

 French and British meanwhile had developed ac- 

 tive sonar, or "Asdic." with which an acoustic 

 pulse was generated and its reflection from the 

 target received on the antisubmarine vehicle. 77 

 This could give both direction and range and the 

 submarine could not avoid it by merely shutting 

 down its machinery. We copied this and began 

 research aimed at improving it, but the results of 

 the research were not effective until after the war. 



In spite of immediate postwar economies, con- 

 siderable enthusiasm for innovation remained and 



some of the high-quality scientific groups assem- 

 bled during the war were not demobilized. Some 

 members of the New London group under H.C. 

 Hayes were relocated to the EES, where they did 

 significant research on the transmission of acous- 

 tic energy through water, and on applications of 

 the knowledge gained from this research. One 

 product of their work was the development of a 

 sonic depth finder in 1922.78 Xhis group joined the 

 radio research group under A. Hoyt Taylor as the 

 original scientific staff of NRL when it finally 

 came into being in 1923.79 



Dr. Taylor"s group at Anacostia (NARL) con- 

 tinued to do important research in radio; for ex- 

 ample, they experimented with radio frequency 

 amplification and public broadcasting, discovered 

 reflections of relatively high-frequency radio 

 waves from ships (and beat phenomena resulting 

 from such reflections), and found perturbations of 

 low-frequency transmissions at night, which had 

 immediate practical applications to radio direction 

 finders and longer range applications to under- 

 standing the diurnal variations of the iono- 

 sphere. i^*' 



Navy— World War l-World War II 



During the war BuOrd assembled a group at the. 

 Washington Navy Yard, which eventually became 

 known as the Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL). 

 and this became a source of scientific and engineer- 

 ing talent. By 1918, the ordnance engineers had ac- 

 cumulated fundamental knowledge of mechanics 

 and metallurgy, and by 1919, this knowledge had 

 been applied to the development of 5-inch radially 

 expanded mono-block guns. BuOrd financed some 

 of Goddard's rocket research from 1920-23, but only 

 for specific applications.**' As a result of the limita- 

 tions imposed by the 1921 Washington Conference, 

 naval ordnance then experienced hard times. **- 



The Bureau of Engineering (BuEng) did re- 

 search on corrosion and its EES claimed credit 

 for first recognizing corrosion fatigue of metals. i*-* 

 The Bureau sponsored a great deal of basic re- 

 search at NRL. As NRL"s traditional chief spon- 

 sors. BuEng sought to have the Laboratory 

 placed under its cognizance and this was done in 



'^Dupree, pp. 306-307; Taylor, pp. 1-2. 

 '■■Duprec. p. 312. 

 'Mbid., pp. .307-308. 

 ■"^Ibid.. pp. 318-319. 



332 COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS AND HISTORICAL TRENDS 



^Hersey, J. B., "A Chronicle of Man's Use of Ocean 

 Acoustics." Oce;inu.s(20). No. 2, 1977, p. 12. 



'"U.S. Navy Marine Engineering l.aboralory, TTie MEL Sto- 

 ry(USNMEL: Annapolis, \965). p. 7. 



79Gebhard, p. .34; Taylor, p. 13. 



™Gebhard. p. 24. 



*'Christman, A. B., Sailors. Scicniists. and Rockets (Naval 

 History Division: Washington. D.C., 1971). 



s^Peck. pp. 206, 219-221. 



"'U.S. Navy Marine Engineering Laboratory, op. cit., p. 7. 



