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A Tufts man ('13) and engineering graduate of M.I.T. and Harvard, Bush taught electrical engineering at M.I.T., where he developed his famed differential analyzer, a mechanical brain that does intricate mathematical calculations. Mathematicians consider this machine (now in use by Army ordnance researchers) one of the most important inventions in modern laboratory technology. Bush left the vice-presidency of M.I.T. to become the Carnegie Institution's president in 1939. During World War I he did Navy research on antisubmarine devices. He has two sons in World War II — an Army lieutenant and an aviation cadet.
Bush's Idea. OSRD was Bush's idea —and a prewar one. Alarmed at U.S. unpreparedness in military technology, in 1940 he rounded up a few scientific cronies —Harvard's Chemist-President James B.
Conant, M.I.T. 's Physicist-President Karl I. Compton, Caltech's Physicist-Dean Richard C. Tolman — and cooked up a plan to organize the nation's research in case of war.* President Roosevelt quickly approved the plan. With the addition of University of Pennsylvania's Dr. Alfred Newton Richards (for medicine), M.I.T.'s Jerome C. Hunsaker (aviation), the Army's Harvey Bundy (special assistant to Secretary Stimson) and Rear Admiral J. A. Purer, this group still constitutes the U.S. scientific high command.
Bush faced an immensely difficult job. Some problems:
¶ The Enemy: Again & again Bush has warned his military colleagues not to underrate their foes. Says he: "In military science, the enemy is damned smart."
¶ Speed: OSRD has a hard & fast deadline—the very last of its devices must be ready for use not later than the summer of 1945.
¶ Professional Pride: Scientific research generally pays off, if it pays at all, in professional recognition and prestige. But in OSRD Bush has had to enlist the nation's best scientists with nothing to offer but patriotism and anonymity; it is doubtful whether some of them will ever get public credit for their discoveries.
¶ Manpower: For many of his young researchers, Bush has had to fight a tug of war with the Army. Creative scientific research is a young man's game, almost exclusively so in a young technology such as electronics. Says Bush: "Hell's fire, only youngsters can do it because only they know it."†
¶ Allied Teamwork: One of Bush's proudest accomplishments is the coordination of research between the U.S. and Britain. There is complete exchange of information : OSRD has an office in London; the British Central Scientific Office has one in Washington.
¶ Relations with the Military: To jealous Army & Navy brass hats, OSRD was a civilian upstart, invading a field traditionally under exclusively military control. But Bush cleared this hurdle neatly by taking his whole show backstage and letting military men get the credit for his scientists' inventions. Result: a silk-smooth harmony between OSRD and the military that seems almost too good to be true.