Vannevar Bush

Vannevar Bush was an American electrical engineer and administrator known for developing the differential analyzer and overseeing government mobilization of scientific research during World War II.

Bush was born in Everett, Massachusetts on March 11th, 1890. His father Richard Perry Bush was a minister in the Universalist Church. Bush attended high school in Chelsea, Massachusetts where his father was a pastor. After high school, he attended Tufts College receiving a bachelor's and master's, graduating in 1913. After working at the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York, as an inspector for the US Nacy and returning to Tufts as an instructor in mathematics, Bush undertook a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Bush earned a Doctor of Engineering in 1916, completing it in one year.

After earning his doctorate, Bush became an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Tufts. Bush worked as a consultant to American Research and Development Corporation (AMRAD), a small company with headquarters on the Tufts campus pioneering the development of radio devices. When the US entered World War I, Bush moved to New London, Connecticut to work on antisubmarine research for AMRAD.

In 1919, Bush became associate professor of power transmission at MIT while continuing to serve as a consultant to AMRAD. In his position with AMRAD, Bush worked on thermionic tubes for the growing radio industry and was one of the founders of the American Appliance Company in 1922 alongside Laurence K Marshall and Charles G Smith. The company would go on to become Raytheon.

At MIT his focus turned to computers. In 1925 he worked with graduate student Herbert R Stewart to develop the product integraph, the first in a series of analog computers. In 1931, Bush and his colleagues completed work on an advanced machine called the Differential Analyzer. It could solve sixth-order differential equations or three simultaneous second-order differential equations. The analog computer was so successful it became the model for similar constructions around the world.

Bush became the first MIT dean of engineering in 1932 under new president Karl T Compton. While working in this position, Bush served as chairman of the committee examining the patent system for President Franklin D Roosevelt’s short-lived Science Advisory Board. In 1939, Bush left MIT becoming the president of the Carnegie Institution (the oldest private research institution in America) in Washington DC.

With the German invasion of Poland, Bush approached Roosevelt with the idea of forming an organization to oversee the research interests of the military. On June 27, 1940, the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) was formed with Bush as Chairman. A year later the Office of Scientific Research and Development was created with Bush as chairman overseeing the NDRC, other science committees and becoming a liaison office among the allied forces. By the end of the war, the OSRD's annual budget exceeded $500 billion. Building on his academic, industrial, and government knowledge, Bush played a central role in directing the government funding of scientific research for the war. The many weapons and military technologies developed through the OSRD include radar and the atomic bomb.