Dahlgren's First Director of Research 79 



with the Bureau of Ordnance through the years. He got to be well-known and 

 respected. 



One of the reasons they were interested in having me come to Dahlgren was 

 that Dr. Thompson was leaving. I had the advantage when I came into this work 

 that the personnel who were in command positions in the Bureau of Ordnance 

 were ex-students of mine and were practically all personal friends. For in- 

 stance, Admiral Schoeffel, Admiral Hussey, and later on Admiral Burke. That 

 was always helpful in expediting our programs. Anyway, Dr. Thompson left to 

 go with Norden Laboratories because Norden Laboratories had the mission of 

 establishing the Indianapolis Ordnance Plant for the Bureau of Ordnance, and 

 he went to Indianapolis and was there during the war. Later, as an outgrowth of 

 that and Dr. Thompson's ideas, the Bureau of Ordnance started the labora- 

 tory at China Lake. 



What were some of your major duties when you were attached officially to Dahlgren in 

 1942? 



When I was detailed on temporary duty to Dahlgren, which was really a 

 steady job, I was instructed to develop a facility for producing the Navy range 

 and bombing tables. At the time I went there, there were only two desk-type 

 computers in the place and two mathematicians to operate them. I immediately 

 saw that we were going to need more desk-type calculators, so I put in a request 

 to get five more. I came back to Annapolis on Thursday evening, and when I 

 returned to Dahlgren on Monday, I found that the order had been changed to 

 two for ballistic work and two for the so-called velocity measurement work. I 

 was somewhat appalled by that, and I think it was difficult to impress command 

 with the necessity for this kind of work, but it was just a matter of a very few 

 months before we were up to about 50 desk-type calculators. 



Shortly after I arrived, we put in requests for mathematical talent from the 

 Naval Reserve. Then we brought in some Wave officers who had mathematical 

 training. I immediately put the mathematicians to work studying ballistics. I 

 gave them some lectures on ballistics and set up the computational procedures. 

 They taught the Wave officers what to do to manage enlisted Waves who 

 worked the desk-type calculators, and we soon had the laboratory going. 



How did Dahlgren's involvement with the Aiken Relay Calculator come about? 



Later, we began to see the first development of what we might refer to as 

 large-scale program calculators. We saw that Aiken had developed the MARK 

 I, which was electromechanical, at the Harvard Computation Laboratory, and 

 also Bell Labs had developed a relay calculator for use in design work in 

 connection with Bell Telephone. We saw the need for getting large-scale 



