October 31, 1950

Memorandum to the File

Conversation with Dr. E. U. Condon, Director, National Bureau of Standards, and Messrs. Hugh Odishaw and N. E. Golovin, Assistants to the Director

I spent the afternoon of October 26 with Dr. Condon and his assistants at the National Bureau of Standards discussing the general aspects of my study. The appointment with Dr. Condon was made by Mr. Stauffacher, and he called in his assistants at the beginning of our discussion. Dr. Odishaw is apparently a technical assistant, and Mr. Golovin's responsibilities appear to relate principally to organization and administration. All of them read a copy of the Memorandum for the President and returned it to me.

In general the attitude of Dr. Condon and his assistants was "use existing organizations, beefing them up or modifying them if necessary, but do not create additional organizations just because problems change or expand." This referred both to the question of an OSRD type organization and to the completion of over-all supervision and coordination of the research and development activities of the Department of Defense, AEC, NACA, Bureau of Standards, National Science Foundation, etc.

They stressed the shortage of scientific and technical manpower, and this seemed to be a significant reason for their disposition not to create new organizations. For every new organization would require more or less scientific manpower for purely administrative or advisory functions and their talents could be better used more creatively.

The idea of creating a Scientific Advisor to the President, or a National Coordinator of Research and Development, or a Presidential Advisory Board on Research and Development comparable to the General Advisory Committee of the AEC, which conceptions were highly congenial to Dr. DuBridge and Dr. Killian, and were not objected to in principle by Dr. Bush, were opposed by Dr. Condon and his associates on the grounds indicated above. Their attitude was that if there are functions To perform, increas the powers of the Chairman of the Research and Development Board, or any other existing official, & he can perform it. Thus, for example, the idea of creating a National Science Coordinating Board, or some such organization, would be acceptable to them if the chairmanship and power of decision were given to--say-the chairman of the RDB since he is already in business with a staff.

They were not aware that the RDB has had authority over all research and development funds of the Defense establishment since the Appropriation Act of Fiscal 1950, and seemed to think that its function was purely advisory and influential. They said that the ONR has contracts with virtually every university in the country having any consequential research capacity.

Dr. Condon suggested that in addition to the obvious people to see the following might be helpful:

Dr. Meyerhof, Executive Secretary of AAAS, is very well informed on the legislative history, etc., of NSF;

Mary E. Switzer, Assistant to Oscar Ewing, the Federal Security Administrator, is not a scientist but is very familiar with Government scientific matters;

Larry Hafstad--he referred to several times.

Returning to previous matters, Dr. Condon and his associates said that the Chairman of the RDB need not be a leading scientist. Conditions now are altogether different than they were in 1940. On my question whether the Chairman of the RDB would not always be so busy with the supervision of the enormous regular research and development program that far-fetched and radical ideas (such as potentials of nuclear fission and the A bomb in 1939-40) would not be thought of, or if suggested would not be given an interested hearing, they said that scientists now have channels and access to the top, even to the President, and that no such idea, if it had validity, would fail to get a hearing. Their point was that any scientist with an idea, no matter how unknown he might be, would have relations with other scientists who in turn could get to the top of the scientific world. And if the idea was not filtered out by the scientists themselves then certainly one of the many scientific leaders who are now more or less involved in military research anyway would insure a hearing.

On the matter of the National Science Foundation and its functions we did not get very far. I pointed out that according to the U. S. Government Manual the Bureau of Standards "has general responsibility for basic research in Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry and Engineering" etc. If they are doing a good job, as presumably they are, what will the NSF do? It would seem that insofar as the Bureau of Standards is doing a good job, just as in the case of the NACA, the NSF will have nothing to do. Dr. Condon and his associates said they have not seen any need for a National Science Foundation anyway. As to the scholarship and fellowship program of the NSF, their attitude was that this was also superfluous if not inadvisable since the support of scientific research in the universities by Government agencies in effect creates fellowships and scholarships and does it in the most effective and practical way--that is by operating organizations such as the Department of Defense services who already are in the business.

The National Bureau of Standards has a total of about 3,200 employees including all of its branches. Their total annual expenditure in the past fiscal year was roughly $24,000,000, virtually all on what might be termed research and development work, of which roughly $8,000,000 was from funds appropriated directly to the Bureau, and some $16,000,000 was by transfer of funds from other agencies of the Government for whom the Bureau of Standards is performing work. The Bureau of Standards in turn contracted out some $3,000,000 of work to outside agencies--universities and commercial institutions--but a large part of this wasfor experimental production models and the like.

We visited the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) and were given some demonstrations by Dr. Suldt who is in charge of it. I was told about the Air Force project SCOOP on which it is being used, among other things, which is an effort to use the machine for rapid determination of logistic requirements, etc., based on war plans. SEAC cost about $350,000. A virtual duplicate of is nearing completion in the Bureau of Standards West Coast Laboratory. A book entitled "Giant Brain" by Edward C. Berkeley is rather inspirational but is an interesting description of the development of electronic automatic computers.