68 



Mr. FuQUA. Our next witness is Dr. Walter A. McDougall, associ- 

 ate professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley. 



Professor McDougall is the author of a highly acclaimed political 

 history of the space age called The Heavens and the Earth: A 

 Political History of the Space Age. is the July selection of the 

 History Book Club, and it was the subject of a cover article in the 

 June 3 issue of the New Republic. 



Dr. McDougall, we will be pleased to hear from you at this time. 



[A biographical sketch of Dr. McDougall follows:] 



Dr. Walter A. McDougall 



Walter A. McDougall, 38, was born in Washington, DC, and raised in Wilmette, IL. 

 He graduated from new Trier Township High School in 1964 and Amherst College, 

 Amherst, MA, in 1968. He then served 2 years as an artilleryman in the U.S. Army, 

 including a year in Vietnam, 1969-70. He then entered graduate study in history at 

 the University of Chicago, including a year's research in Europe. He took his PhD 

 in 1974 and the following year began teaching at the University of California, 

 Berkeley, where he is now associate professor of history. 



Dr. McDougall has authored two major books and co-edited a third. He has been a 

 fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian 

 and was named one of the "The Best of the New Generation: Men and Women 

 Under Forty Who Are Changing America" by Esquire magazine. His current books 

 are The Grenada Papers (with Paul Seabury) and The Heavens and the Earth: A 

 Political History of the Space Age. 



STATEMENT OF DR. WALTER A. McDOUGALL, ASSOCIATE PRO- 

 FESSOR OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKE- 

 LEY, BERKELEY, CA 



Dr. McDougall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



I deeply appreciate your invitation to serve as a kind of wild card 

 and share my historical perspective. 



My father is a patent attorney, and I have always marvelled at 

 his combination of legal and technical knowledge. Yet this commit- 

 tee delves into everything from ocean drilling to DNA research, 

 high energy physics and space stations, from the point of view of 

 science, law, and the national interest. May I say I believe the com- 

 mittee has earned more thanks and sympathy from the public than 

 it probably gets. 



Your agenda rightly notes that changes in science policy usually 

 occur only in times of crisis. At the very least, however, this task 

 force can do a great service by revealing the barriers to change 

 that operate in normal times. 



In 1828, 21 years after Robert Fulton's steamboat plied the 

 Hudson, the British First Lord of the Admiralty reported: 



Their lordships felt it their bounden duty to discourage to the utmost of their abil- 

 ity the use of steam vessels, as they considered that the introduction of steam was 

 calculated to strike a fatal blow at the naval supremacy of the Empire. 



This executive blindness afflicted Britain until 1848, when the 

 British Parliament studied French naval plans and decided mo- 

 mentously to rely on private industry to perform naval research, 

 since the British private sector was technically superior and more 

 efficient. 



But the legislators wisely continued some funding for state arse- 

 nals to monitor the performance of contracts. When the French ap- 

 proved construction of ironclad steamships in 1857, the British, 



