124 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



tral laboratory of the section was moved from the Carnegie Institution of 

 Washington to Johns Hopkins University. Work on fuzes for bombs and 

 rockets which had been carried on under the former contract was trans- 

 ferred to the National Bureau of Standards under Section E of Division A. 



The transfer of Section T was for reasons of administrative convenience, 

 not of principle, for there was nothing in the nature of the problem or the 

 magnitude of the program to require the shift. Dr. Merle A. Tuve con- 

 tinued as Chief of the section. Because of the initially predominant interest 

 of the Navy in the subject matter, a naval officer was appointed as special 

 assistant to the Director of OSRD to aid the Director in following the 

 activities of the section. 



The pattern of Section T activities was the same as that for other OSRD 

 activities except that Section T operations were reviewed by the special 

 assistant rather than by a committee and that Section T funds were largely 

 provided by the Navy. In the later stages an increasingly large proportion 

 of the section's operations was devoted to matters more closely tied in with 

 procurement than with research. Bush suggested that it would be desirable 

 for the section to be taken over by the Navy. Upon the insistence of the 

 Navy as expressed in a letter of November 22, 1943, that the section could 

 function more effectively as a part of OSRD than it could as a part of the 

 Navy, he did not press for immediate transfer. When OSRD prepared its 

 demobilization plans nearly a year later, however, the Navy concluded that 

 it would be desirable to take over the Section T activities as a unit. The 

 first step was a Navy-Johns Hopkins University contract of December i, 

 1944, which permitted the transfer of the Section T central laboratory staff 

 and facilities. This was followed by a series of Navy contracts replacing 

 OSRD contracts in the Section T field. 



The OSRD method of contracting was followed by the Navy in connec- 

 tion with the transfer of the section. In fact the Navy vocabulary was en- 

 riched by the addition of the phrase, "Section T type contract," to describe 

 the relation which the Navy entered into to support the transferred activi- 

 ties. A total of approximately $26,400,000, most of it received by transfer 

 from the Navy, was spent in support of the Section T program. 



Sensory Devices 



The problem of rehabilitation of wounded soldiers was on the threshold 

 of OSRD jurisdiction. The unsatisfactory situation with respect to artificial 

 limbs led OSRD upon recommendation of CMR to enter into a contract 

 with the National Academy of Sciences under which a Committee on 

 Prosthetic Devices was established to survey the field and work toward 

 the improvement of devices. The problem of devising and developing in- 

 strumental aids for men with sight impaired in the war was one of much 



