through the channel of presidential ap- 

 pointment of the director while Bush 

 sought to isolate science from possible 

 Government interference); 

 4. Whether patents resulting from research 

 should be the property of the Government 

 or of the discoverer (on this count Kilgore 

 argued that research done at the taxpayers' 

 expense should be freely available, where- 

 as Bush argued that discoveries should 

 usually remain the property of those who 

 made them). 



The controversy over these points, par- 

 ticularly that involving presidential appoint- 

 ment of the director, delayed the establishment 

 of the proposed foundation for five years, from 

 1945 to 1950. 31 



In the meantime, large segments of the 

 Nation's research efforts were being organized 

 under independent agencies, complicating the 

 eventual task of coordination. The vast poten- 

 tial of atomic physics, not yet publicly known 

 when Bush and Kilgore reported their plans, 

 was dramatically brought to the public's 

 attention in August 1945 with the dropping of 

 an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and had to be 

 addressed immediately. The Atomic Energy 

 Commission was established in 1946 as a new 

 agency with a mission that demanded the 

 exercise of concern and initiative in all five of 

 the areas that had been outlined by Bush as the 

 responsibility of the contemplated National 

 Research Foundation. A similar situation 

 developed when the National Institutes of 

 Health, a small agency with vast paper authori- 

 ty, successfully bid in 1945 to take over the 

 unfinished medical research of the Office of 

 Scientific Research and Development. 



Within the Navy Department, the establish- 

 ment of the Office of Naval Research in 1946 

 provided a military analog to the yet-to-be- 

 formed National Science Foundation. In 1948 



the director of the Physical Sciences Division of 

 ONR wrote that "All of us, both officers and 

 civilians in ONR, feel that we are engaged in a 

 very important experiment, investment in basic 

 research. This experiment," he continued, "has 

 two aspects. The first is continuing the 

 relationship developed during the war between 

 scientists on the one hand and the Naval officers 

 on the other, which has had a profound effect on 

 naval thinking and procedure. The second is the 

 support of basic research on a broad and 

 comprehensive scale by the Federal Govern- 

 ment." With justifiable pride he claimed that 

 "whatever the future may bring, the Office of 

 Naval Research has helped to keep alive basic 

 research in this country for the past 3 years, 

 stepping in when there was no one else able to 

 carry the burden." 32 



In the postwar years few sources of support 

 seemed so reliable as the military establish- 

 ment, and while the problem of secrecy was 

 found in many areas of weapons research, the 

 very definition of basic research argued against 

 any such need. Indeed, ONR was proud that in 

 1946, "of the five hundred university projects in 

 the Physical Sciences Division, only three carry 

 security classification." 33 



Surveying this new and uncoordinated 

 science establishment, The President's Scien- 

 tific Research Board, chaired by John R. 

 Steelman, declared in 1947 "that, as a Nation, 

 we [should] increase our annual expenditures 

 for research and development as rapidly as we 

 can expand facilities and increase trained 

 manpower. By 1957," it urged, "we should be 

 devoting at least one percent of our national 

 income to research and development in the 

 universities, industry, and the Government. " M 

 The 1957 share was in fact, 2.7 percent. 



■" For a recent discussion see J. Merton England. "Dr. Bush 

 Writes a Report: Science the Endless Frontier," Science. 191 

 (9 January 1978], 41-47. 



12 Emmanuel R. Piore. "Investment in Basic Research," 

 Physics Today, 1 (November, 1948). 6-9. 



13 Ibid.. 8. 



14 Science and Public Policy. Vol. /: A Program for the 

 Nation A Report to the President by John R. Steelman. 

 Chairman, The President's Scientific Research Board 

 [August 27. 1947). pp. 4-5, 6, 28. 



12 



RESEARCH IN THE UNITED STATES 



