Vannever Bush's Lasting Impact

In my book Deming's Journey to Profound Knowledge, I highlight connections between Vannevar Bush and Dr. Deming. However, I am not sure I fully conveyed Dr. Bush's "profound" impact on modern society.

Introductory Biography

Vannevar Bush, played by Matthew Modine in the movie Oppenheimer, was a prominent American engineer, inventor, and science administrator who significantly contributed to computer science. He profoundly influenced the science policy of the U.S. government during and after World War II. Bush was born in Everett, Massachusetts, and completed his undergraduate and master's degrees from Tufts College. Later, he earned a doctorate in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University. The story went on when he arrived at MIT. He proclaimed that he would get his Ph.D. in one year, and he did.

Bush began his career as an electrical engineer and played a pivotal role in developing the differential analyzer. Dr. Deming also worked with the differential analyzer. This was one of the earliest analog computers. He served as the vice president of MIT and later became the president of the Carnegie Institution.

During World War II, Bush was appointed Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). In this position, he supervised the development of crucial technologies such as radar and the Manhattan Project.

One of the most significant contributions of Bush's legacy is his foresight regarding the future of information technology. He introduced the concept of the Memex in his renowned essay "As We May Think" in 1945, published in The Atlantic Monthly and Life Magazine. A Memex was a theoretical machine designed to store and navigate information in a way that anticipated the structure of the internet. In many ways, this is a precursor to our modern AI.

After the war, Bush advocated for the federal funding of scientific research, leading to the creation of the National Science Foundation. His report, "Science, The Endless Frontier," laid the groundwork for government-supported scientific inquiry in the United States.

Some Additional "Profound" Observations

Founder of Raytheon

In 1922, Dr. Bush helped found Raytheon. Initially, the company focused on new refrigeration technology. However, their first product, a gaseous rectifier, failed in the refrigeration market. The Raytheon tube, a gas-filled tube that could switch and rectify high voltages, proved successful instead. This invention proved crucial for the development of radio technology, allowing Raytheon to become a significant supplier of radio tubes and paving the way for the home radio market.?

Silicon Valley

Excerpts from Deming's Journey to Profound Knowledge

Dr. Bush was frustrated by the arm's-length relationship between academia and the U.S. military. At that time, scientists and academics would discover and invent things according to their research. The military would then evaluate these inventions and innovations to see if they had possible military applications.?

Bush thought it should be the other way around: Uncle Sam should sponsor academic research to create military technologies. Two months before the Battle of Britain began, he presented a one-page memo to President Roosevelt, who immediately approved the creation of the National Defense Research Committee. This was a major contributor to what would become known as the military-industrial complex.?

...

I'd be remiss in telling this chain of events if I didn't mention the Harvard Radio Research Lab, an outgrowth of MIT's Rad Lab. Its Director, Fred Terman, developed electronic countermeasures to enemy radar and communications equipment. After the war, Terman returned to his?alma mater of Stanford to become the dean of engineering. Taking a page from Bush's book, he realized the value of defense research and moved to establish a radio lab at Stanford in 1945. He mentored William Hewlett and David Packard, the eventual founders of Hewlett-Packard. If that weren't enough, when he heard that William Shockley had founded a semiconductor company, he convinced him to set up shop near Stanford, where Shockley could find a steady stream of new graduates as eager employees. In 1951, Terman convinced the university to lease some of its land to tech companies. Stanford Research Park came to be home to Hewlett-Packard, Eastman Kodak, and divisions of G.E. and Lockheed.?And that's how we got Silicon Valley.?

Influence on Apple?

Dr. Bush's paper "As We May Think", had a lasting impact on modern technology as well.

Except from Deming's Journey to Profound Knowledge

Vannevar Bush's legacy goes even further. In 1945, a young sailor found himself on the Philippine island of Leyte. The war had ended just as his ship had left its U.S. port, so he would never see any action. Bored, he rifled through the magazines in a Red Cross hut on stilts stretching out over the water. He came across an issue of?LIFE?magazine and began flipping through its pages, stopping to read an article titled "As We May Think" by none other than Bush. In his writing, Bush predicted the creation of an office machine called the Memex that would store records, notes, and other information. What he described was essentially a desktop computer built into a regular desk.?

The article fired up the sailor's imagination. Twenty years later, his research would lay the groundwork, according to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, "for everything we have in the way computers work today." Many credit the sailor-turned-researcher—one Douglas Engelbart—as the inventor of the mouse, the precursor to graphic user interface (the way we interact with computers today), and even email. Perhaps most importantly, he was one of the architects who enabled computers to communicate with each other. So, he basically invented desktop computing and the internet we know today.?

Vannevar Bush's contributions to science, technology, and policy have impacted modern society. His work has influenced the development of computing, the internet, scientific research, and development structure.