1336 



— There was an early recognition of the need to mobilize 

 technology to repair war damage and to restore the economies 

 of devastated nations of Europe, and to afford an avenue for 

 economic development of poor countries elsewhere; 



— There was the recognition of the many important contribu- 

 tions of scientists to the U.S. war effort, under the leadership of 

 Vannevar Bush as Director of the wartime Office of Scientific 

 Research and Development (OSRD), and the expectation that 

 a great impetus in industrial technology would follow the close 

 of the war; and 



— Less evident, but still consequential, was the concept that 

 national excellence in science and technology was a form of 

 demonstration of national power and world influence.^ 



Postwar Elevation of Science and Technology 



Faith in the contributions of science and technology to national well 

 being, which had waned during the Great Depression of the 1930s, 

 appeared to have been restored by the demonstrated wartime accom- 

 plishments in technology. A remarkable ferment was evident in 

 scientific and technological agencies and their associated communities 

 in the National Capital immediately after World War II. The activity 

 centered on the highly dramatic issue of what to do about the "Man- 

 hattan District" that had produced the atomic bomb. But the transi- 

 tion of this wartime arrangement into the U.S. Atomic Energy 

 Commission was accompanied by revelations of the "now it can be 

 told" variety from many other sources. The War Department released 

 details about its secret proximit}^ fuze. The Department of the Navy 

 disclosed its radar achievements. The Senate Mobilization Subcom- 

 mittee held lengthy hearings on 'U.S. science at war, and entertained 

 proposals for a permanent postwar science establishment. (These 

 eventuated in 1950 in the National Science Foundation.) The Office of 

 Naval Research (ONR) was stimulated to undertake an impressive 

 expansion in the sponsorship of basic research. The report by Vannevar 

 Bush and his associates in OSRD ^° calling for a national research 

 foundation was followed in 1947 by the report of John R. Steelman to 

 President Truman on national science policy." Bush himself was 

 brought into the Pentagon in early 1947 to chair a new Research and 

 Development Board to sustain in peacetime some of the wartime 

 cooperation between academic science and the military services. 



An important feature of much of this activity was the emphasis on 

 "science" by scientists whose labors during the war had been mainly in 

 technological development. The atomic scientists were able to cite the 

 complex interaction of basic science with technology in their urgent 

 program, but most of the other technical achievements of the war had 

 resulted from the successful conversion of laboratory scientists into 

 technologists. At the close of the war they desired to return to basic 



• As Secretary Kissinger has written: "The impact of Sputnik, after all, had little to do with its strategic 

 importance. President Eisenhower's constant claim that space was militarily insignificant — even if correct — 

 missed the crucial point. To many of the new nations Soviet supremacy in space may have the kind of 

 attraction Western technological mastery had in the late nineteenth century." In The Necessity for Choice: 

 Prospects of American Foreign Policy (New York: Doubleday, Anchor Edition, 1962) , p. 334. 



1" U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, Science, the Endless Frontier, a report to the Presi- 

 dent on a program for postwar scientific research, by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific 

 Research and Development (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, July 1945; National 

 Science Foundation, reprinted Julv 1960'), 220 pp. See especially pp. 34-40. 



" U.S. President's Scientific Research Board, Science and Public Policy, 5 vols., a report to the Pre.sident 

 by John R. Steelman, Chaiiman (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947), see vol. I, 

 p. viii. 



