Editing Vannevar Bush (section)

=== National Defense Research Committee ===
During World War&nbsp;I, Bush had become aware of poor cooperation between civilian scientists and the military. Concerned about the lack of coordination in scientific research and the requirements of defense mobilization, Bush proposed the creation of a general directive agency in the [[Federal government of the United States|federal government]], which he discussed with his colleagues. He had the secretary of NACA prepare a draft of the proposed [[National Defense Research Committee]] (NDRC) to be presented to Congress, but after the Germans invaded France in May 1940, Bush decided speed was important and approached President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] directly. Through the President's uncle, [[Frederic Delano]], Bush managed to set up a meeting with Roosevelt on June 12, 1940, to which he brought a single sheet of paper describing the agency. Roosevelt approved the proposal in 15&nbsp;minutes, writing "OK – FDR" on the sheet.{{sfn|Zachary|1997|pp=104–112}}

With Bush as chairman, the NDRC was functioning even before the agency was officially established by order of the [[Council of National Defense]] on June 27, 1940. The organization operated financially on a hand-to-mouth basis with monetary support from the president's emergency fund.{{sfn|Zachary|1997|p=129}} Bush appointed four leading scientists to the NDRC: [[Karl Taylor Compton]] (president of MIT), [[James B. Conant]] (president of Harvard University), [[Frank B. Jewett]] (president of the National Academy of Sciences and chairman of the Board of Directors of Bell Laboratories), and [[Richard C. Tolman]] (dean of the graduate school at Caltech); Rear Admiral [[Harold G. Bowen, Sr.]] and Brigadier General [[George V. Strong]] represented the military. The civilians already knew each other well, which allowed the organization to begin functioning immediately.{{sfn|Stewart|1948|p=7}} The NDRC established itself in the [[Administration Building, Carnegie Institution of Washington|administration building]] at the Carnegie Institution of Washington.{{sfn|Zachary|1997|p=119}} Each member of the committee was assigned an area of responsibility, while Bush handled coordination. A small number of projects reported to him directly, such as the [[S-1 Executive Committee|S-1 Section]].{{sfn|Stewart|1948|pp=10–12}} Compton's deputy, [[Alfred Lee Loomis|Alfred Loomis]], said that "of the men whose death in the Summer of 1940 would have been the greatest calamity for America, the President is first, and Dr.&nbsp;Bush would be second or third."{{sfn|Zachary|1997|p=106}}

Bush was fond of saying that "if he made any important contribution to the war effort at all, it would be to get the Army and Navy to tell each other what they were doing."{{sfn|Zachary|1997|p=125}} He established a cordial relationship with [[United States Secretary of War|Secretary of War]] [[Henry L. Stimson]], and Stimson's assistant, [[Harvey H. Bundy]], who found Bush "impatient" and "vain", but said he was "one of the most important, able men I ever knew".{{sfn|Zachary|1997|p=129}} Bush's relationship with the navy was more turbulent. Bowen, the director of the [[Naval Research Laboratory]] (NRL), saw the NDRC as a bureaucratic rival, and recommended abolishing it. A series of bureaucratic battles ended with the NRL placed under the [[Bureau of Ships]], and [[Secretary of the Navy]] [[Frank Knox]] placing an unsatisfactory fitness report in Bowen's personnel file. After the war, Bowen would again try to create a rival to the NDRC inside the navy.{{sfn|Zachary|1997|pp=124–127}}

On August 31, 1940, Bush met with [[Henry Tizard]], and arranged a series of meetings between the NDRC and the [[Tizard Mission]], a British scientific delegation. At a meeting On September 19, 1940, the Americans described Loomis and Compton's microwave research. They had an experimental 10&nbsp;cm wavelength [[short wave]] radar, but admitted that it did not have enough power and that they were at a dead end. [[Edward George Bowen|Taffy Bowen]] and [[John Cockcroft]] of the Tizard Mission then produced a [[cavity magnetron]], a device more advanced than anything the Americans had seen, with a power output of around 10&nbsp;kW at 10&nbsp;cm,{{sfn|Conant|2002|pp=168–169, 182}} enough to spot the periscope of a surfaced submarine at night from an aircraft. To exploit the invention, Bush decided to create a special laboratory. The NDRC allocated the new laboratory a budget of $455,000 for its first year. Loomis suggested that the lab should be run by the Carnegie Institution, but Bush convinced him that it would best be run by MIT. The [[Radiation Laboratory]], as it came to be known, tested its airborne radar from an Army [[Douglas B-18 Bolo|B-18]] on March 27, 1941. By mid-1941, it had developed [[SCR-584 radar]], a mobile radar fire control system for [[Antiaircraft warfare|antiaircraft guns]].{{sfn|Zachary|1997|pp=132–134}}

In September 1940, [[Norbert Wiener]] approached Bush with a proposal to build a digital computer. Bush declined to provide NDRC funding for it on the grounds that he did not believe that it could be completed before the end of the war. The supporters of digital computers were disappointed at the decision, which they attributed to a preference for outmoded analog technology. In June 1943, the Army provided $500,000 to build the computer, which became [[ENIAC]], the first general-purpose electronic computer. Having delayed its funding, Bush's prediction proved correct as ENIAC was not completed until December 1945, after the war had ended.<ref>{{cite court |litigants=Honeywell, Inc. v. Sperry Rand Corp. |vol=180 |reporter=U.S.P.Q. (BNA) |opinion=673 |pinpoint=p. 20, finding 1.1.3 |court=U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, Fourth Division |date=1973 |url=http://www.ushistory.org/more/eniac/public.htm |quote= ...&nbsp;the ENIAC machine was being operated rather than tested after 1&nbsp;December 1945.}}</ref> His critics saw his attitude as a failure of vision.{{sfn|Zachary|1997|p=266–267}}