242 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



Provided further, That the Office of Scientific Research and Development may 

 sell, lease, lend or otherwise dispose of, under such terms and conditions as it 

 may deem advisable, devices, scientific or technical equipment, models, or other 

 articles of personality, developed, constructed, produced in or purchased for 

 the performance of its scientific or medical contracts, except ardcles acquired for 

 administrative purposes, and all receipts from such dispositions shall be covered 

 into the Treasury as miscellaneous receipts. 



In accordance with this authorization, the provisions of the Surplus 

 Property Act of 1944, and the regulations issued pursuant to that Act, the 

 policy followed for the disposition of property no longer needed for OSRD 

 work was (i) to transfer to other Government agencies (particularly the 

 War and Navy Departments) that property required for use in continuing 

 work initiated by OSRD; (2) to permit contractors, under the terms of 

 their contracts, to retain property not needed by the Government, and 

 (3) to dispose of any remaining property in accordance with Surplus Prop- 

 erty Regulations. Preference to the Army and Navy was in accord with a 

 resolution adopted by NDRC in August 1945, that the Army and Navy 

 should be given an opportunity to acquire without reimbursement any 

 property required for the continuance of the work taken over from NDRC. 

 A similar preference was accorded the Public Health Service when it con- 

 tinued medical research initiated by CMR. As a result the property on hand 

 at the termination of a large number of OSRD contracts was transferred 

 to other Government agencies and, although many problems of detail arose, 

 the disposition of the property became a relatively simple problem. 



Disposition of Property by Transfer 



Property on hand under one contract was frequently made available for 

 use under other contracts upon the recommendation of the appropriate 

 Technical Aide simply by directing the contractor in possession of the prop- 

 erty to deliver it for use under another of his own contracts or to another 

 contractor. The receiving contractor was required to acknowledge accounta- 

 bility for the property to OSRD under the terms of the pertinent contract, 

 and the original contractor was relieved of accountability. Such transactions 

 occurred with regularity from the middle of 1942 until shortly after V-J Day. 



During the same period the work on atomic energy was taken over by 

 the War Department, and the work of Section T on fuzes and of Divi- 

 sion 6, NDRC, on underwater sound studies was taken over by the Navy 

 Department. Property acquired under the approximately 170 contracts in- 

 volved was transferred to the interested Services. 



In the case of the large central laboratory contracts, neither the contractors 

 nor the Services desired to continue the contracts under the existing arrange- 

 ments although the latter were interested in carrying on some portions of 



