[HN Gopher] Vannevar Bush Engineered the 20th Century
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Vannevar Bush Engineered the 20th Century
Author : cyberlimerence
Score : 80 points
Date : 2024-06-18 13:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| eatonphil wrote:
| I've been reading the mentioned Bush memoir "Pieces of the
| Action" and it's pretty good. Stories about engineering and
| organizational politics. As good as any business classic (e.g.
| "My Years With General Motors" or "High Output Management").
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| > _Bush's pivotal contribution was his creation of the "research
| contract," whereby public funds are awarded to civilian
| scientists and engineers based on effort, not just outcomes (as
| had been normal before World War II). This freedom to try new
| things and take risks transformed relations between government,
| business, and academia. By the end of the war, Bush's research
| organization was spending US $3 million a week (about $52 million
| in today's dollars) on some 6,000 researchers, most of them
| university professors and corporate engineers._
|
| I wish I could see a lot more parallels to this. Right now the
| only thing that jumps to mind is the NLNet grants.
|
| The recent round of 45 NGI Zero grants was announced just
| yesterday, https://nlnet.nl/news/2024/20240618-Call-
| announcement.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40720037 .
| But in general, if I'm looking for something inspiring or
| hopeful, I'll often see what NLNet sponsored folks have been up
| to; https://hn.algolia.com/?query=nlnet&sort=byDate
| transpute wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush
|
| _> Compton 's deputy, 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. Bush would be second
| or third." 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."
|
| > His most difficult problems, and also greatest successes, were
| keeping the confidence of the military, which distrusted the
| ability of civilians to observe security regulations and devise
| practical solutions, and opposing conscription of young
| scientists into the armed forces.. OSRD requested deferments for
| some 9,725 employees of OSRD contractors, of which all but 63
| were granted. In his obituary, The New York Times described Bush
| as "a master craftsman at steering around obstacles, whether they
| were technical or political or bull-headed generals and
| admirals."
|
| > In "As We May Think", an essay published by the Atlantic
| Monthly in July 1945, Bush wrote: "This has not been a
| scientist's war; it has been a war in which all have had a part.
| The scientists, burying their old professional competition in the
| demand of a common cause, have shared greatly and learned much.
| It has been exhilarating to work in effective partnership."_
| ricksunny wrote:
| I gave a talk on Vannevar Bush & innovation at a 'pop-up city'
| just two weeks ago:
|
| https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11rXfniJtbvzAgSMv2Wpx...
|
| He really transformed US innovation. Some good, some
| questionable, and some stories probably yet to be told. Hope you
| enjoy. I'm working on uploading the video of the talk here over
| the next couple of days. If any questions I'll try to field them
| here.
| ricksunny wrote:
| I think the most enduring mystery of #Vannevar Bush is why his
| name is no longer a household one today, in the way that
| Edison's is or that we have every reason to expect Musk's to be
| 80 years from now.
|
| This is one article that speaks to that, notably writing from
| 1990. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
| xpm-1990-05-24-fi-444-st...
|
| By the way, I do recommend reading what remains the only
| biography of Vannevar, "Endless Frontier", written by the same
| author as OP's article, G Pascal Zachary. It is quite good. The
| subject probably merits multiple biographies just as many other
| pivotal people in history also have multiple biographies to
| provide different angles or more nuance as more information
| comes to light.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Thank you for the recommendation! That book looks great.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/475762.Endless_Frontier
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Zachary's a good writer. HN denizens might know him for
| "Showstopper!", about Dave Cutler's project at Microsoft to
| remake VMS as WNT.
| transpute wrote:
| Good article, thanks.
|
| _> Bush knew how to map, build and manage the relationships
| and organizations necessary to get things done. He knew how
| to craft the human networks that could build the
| technological networks.. At OSRD's height.. roughly two-
| thirds of the nation's physicists were working for him.. Bush
| ambiguously noted that his role was far more administrative
| than technical: "I made no technical contribution to the war
| effort," he wrote. "Not a single idea of mine ever amounted
| to shucks. At times, I have been called an 'atomic
| scientist.' It would be fully as accurate to call me a child
| psychologist."_
| tcmart14 wrote:
| My guess is that because Bush, from my memory of everything I
| learned about him, was mostly behind the scenes. Edison for
| example, kept himself in the news as the face of everything,
| even doing photo-ops to present himself as an eccentric
| genius. Bush was preferred to be glue behind the scenes for
| the most part. Probably like how we may all know Eisenhower
| as the face of D-Day, who yes, played a big role, but none of
| us probably know the name of the guy on his staff who handled
| every excruciating detail of the logistics of it all (which
| is probably one of the most impressive parts of D-Day).
|
| Addition: Also sort of like how everyone knows Edison as the
| man behind the light bulb, but not very many people can name
| the people on Edison's team that helped with the light bulb.
| ricksunny wrote:
| Here is the talk, the biographical background part is the
| first 20 mins, and the innovation lessons part is the last 17
| mins. (Pardon the rushed editing):
|
| https://youtu.be/pKCfeBWXcCI
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| interesting thing about bush was that his computing background
| was heavily analog, to the point that the digital switch
| eventually left him out of the action:
|
| _> Bush gradually drifted into the backwaters of science and
| technology. The rise of digital computing passed him by: an
| analog man to the end, he underrated the possibilities of digital
| technology. He did, however, make one contribution to the field.
| His "memex"--an idea for a machine that could store and connect
| information and thus work as an artificial aid to memory--later
| inspired others to create a version in digital form: hypertext.
| Wikipedia entries, with their hyperlinks taking readers ever
| deeper and wider, would likely have pleased Bush despite their
| digital form._
|
| https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/the-rise-and...
|
| that's one thing that strikes me about the memex: it's very
| analog and, to me, that makes it seem like less of a direct line
| to the modern notions of hypertext, at least on first glance
| transpute wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush
|
| _> 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. His critics saw his attitude as a failure of
| vision._
| pjmorris wrote:
| He shows up as a key early player in 'The Dream Machine', Michael
| Waldrop, which follows JCR Licklider's career including the early
| development of what became the personal computer and the
| internet.
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