Three Historical Appraisals: Innovating 15 



these contributions have kept our Navy at the forefront of our 

 national military team. 



Of course, the recognition that scientific development is vital 

 to the readiness of our Navy dates a long way back. Let me 

 quote from a statement by the Secretary of the Navy. "It is of 

 little service to a nation to have any Navy at all unless it is 

 a fair expresssion of the highest scientific resources of its day. 

 The destructive power of modern implements has become so 

 great as to dominate in actual warfare." Now this was not 

 Secretary Nitze whom I have quoted. This was Secretary of the 

 Navy William C. Whitney in his Annual Report dated 1885. 

 It is just as true today as it was then and I think we all 

 recognize, in and out of uniform, that scientific research is the 

 very basis of all the Navy's great achievements of the past and 

 of the present. 



This year marks the 20th Anniversary of the statutory Office 

 of Naval Research as such, but even long before Naval Re- 

 search was given institutional recognition by the creation of 

 this Office, the Navy and its people were deeply involved in 

 scientific research and occupied in some ways jx)sitions of 

 widely accepted leadership. An early example in which we 

 continue to take great pride are the experiments which were 

 conducted by our own Naval scientist A. A. Michelson at the 

 Naval Academy Avhen he was a professor there and which 

 produced some of the first precise measurements of the velocity 

 of light. Moreover, ONR's own in-house laboratory which 

 antedates the creation of ONR, the Naval Research Laboratory, 

 has enjoyed for many years the highest reputation throughout 

 the land in scientific research. 



From the point of view of the Fleet, however, the examples 

 which for us represent the contributions of Naval research 

 are the ones all around us, and — although both Dr. Waterman 

 and Dr. Foster already mentioned it, I should like to return 

 to the Polaris nuclear deterrent. It is — you might say — a 

 representative contribution, indeed. Looking at its two basic 

 components: the nuclear powered submarine and the inter- 



